On Wed, 2 Jul 2003, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 12:49:10PM +0100, Esteban Manchado Vel?zquez wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 30, 2003 at 10:57:40PM +0200, Matthias Urlichs wrote:
> > Now, if one removes or purges, say, KDE to install an unofficial
> > version... would (s)he loose all his icons and configuration?
> >
> > It would be nice, perhaps, having a tool to do it "by hand", but I
> > don't think everybody wants it to be done automatically when removing
> > packages.
>
> Indeed, it's definitely an incredibly bad idea to try to remove things
> in users' home directories by hand. Consider people who keep their home
> directories in sync (whether it be version control, NFS, unison, or
> whatever) across multiple systems. Those people definitely don't want
> purging a package on just one system to mess about with their shared
> home directory.
No one expects the sysadmin to remove their own files... in fact, people
do believe their home directories are private, and are going to
(rightfully) see the sysadmin even _reading_ them as an invasion of
privacy. Backing up or moving the entire dir to another physical disk
during an upgrade is ok, as long as the admin doesn't meddle with the
contents of the dir.
How I understand Daniel Ruoso's idea, is making:
1. a repository for keeping track of the names used for their $HOME/ files
by packages that had been installed somewhen in the system's history.
Example:
wmaker: ("GNUstep/")
joe: (".joerc",".jstarrc",".editorrc",".jmacsrc",".jpicorc",
".rjoerc")
mc: (".cedit/",".mc/")
links: ("./links")
This repository could optionally hold some information whether the file
in question is installed by that package by default or has to be copied
by the user. If the former applies, it might even give some way to
tell if that config is likely to have been modified by the user or not.
2. a browser which, when invoked by the user, produces a nice list similar
to:
File Size Package Status
GNUstep/ 150MB wmaker purged
.jstarrc 2KB joe installed
.cedit/ 40KB mc removed
.mc/ 6KB mc removed
(the original idea involved listing just purged packages, but an user
over the quota (no one else ever takes any time to clean up their dirs
:p) is pretty likely to consider getting rid of unneeded dotfiles even
if the package in question is still installed).
The user would then be able to either mark the files for removal is
some nifty ncurses-based browser akin to dselect, or type something
like "userconfpurge delete --status=purged".
Whipping up some nice browser and it's command-line backend is not a
problem.
Making the repository is.
Regards,
1KB
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