On 13 Jan 2005 at 8:21, Joerg Jaspert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Its just how the dependency system works. Requiring the packages.
> Wait until it gets out of incoming and its done.
That's not very constructive advice JJ... I already KNEW about Debian
Unstable's poorly synchronized dependency system before writing the bug report.
Perhaps my first report didn't get my ideas across; a recap and a few ideas as
to what a fix might look like follow...
The current behavior of 'lg-subscription' makes the package name inaccurate.
So either the name should be changed to some other word that doesn't give a
false impression of what it does, ("lg-recent-issues"?), or else it should be
fixed so that it lives up to its name. Surely all users would prefer the
latter.
There must be other ways to do subscriptions so that this doesn't occur.
Why should a subscription package depend on any particular issue? Why should
the subscription package itself need to be updated whenever a new issue comes
out? That's more work for you than if 'lg-subscription' needed no periodic
human maintenance.
Suppose that there was script that runs every so often, say every four weeks
after the last successful subscription fetch, then every few days as needed
until the next successful fetch, perhaps after an 'apt-get update'. The script
checks what LG issues the user has, and what newer ones are available. Then,
IF there's a new one, it constructs an 'lg-subscription-adhoc-latest' package
in '/var/cache/apt/archive' on the fly, and updates the package list to include
it.
Naturally, the hypothetical 'lg-subscription-adhoc-latest' would be required by
'lg-subscription'.
Some example code:
One way to find out the latest issue available (shell script):
dglob lg-issue -a | sed 's/[a-z-]*//' | sort -g | tail -1
107
And how to find out what's the newest issue installed:
dglob lg-issue | sed 's/[a-z-]*//' | sort -g | tail -1
107
Compare these numbers, and if the second is lower, make a list of the needed LG
issues:
wehave=`dglob lg-issue | sed 's/[a-z-]*//' | sort -g | tail -1`
theyhave=`dglob lg-issue -a | sed 's/[a-z-]*//' | sort -g | tail -1`
if [ $wehave -lt $theyhave ]
then
getthese=`seq -f "lg-issue%g" $wehave $theyhave`
# magic code goes here to make 'lg-subscription-adhoc-latest',
# which depends on '$getthese'.
fi
Or something like that. Perhaps there's a less kludgy way than making a
dummy package -- maybe the magic code could be as simple as:
apt-get install $theyhave
...but I don't know how that would work for modem users when they're offline.
I'll reopen this bug as a 'wishlist' and rename it with a more general
description. Please, if you have no desire to fix it, refrain from closing it
and kindly tag it with a 'wontfix'.
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