On Wed, Aug 05, 2009 at 06:58:48PM -0400, Luis Useche wrote: > On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 3:59 PM, Stephen Takacs<perl...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Luis Useche wrote: > >> It seems like an additional information should be added to the package > >> database. A bit indicating if the package was installed manually by > >> the user (admin?) or not. Then, the package can only be deleted if the > >> the user explicitly say so as oppose to "automatic deletion as > >> dependency". > > > > That might be a solution if you're stricly using package/ports. But > > consider what happens when you manually build and install other programs > > that came in the form of plain old source code tarballs (make && make > > install, etc.) Most of these programs will have library dependencies > > and some of those libraries will have already been installed as > > dependencies of "official" packages. If you remove the whole shebang (a > > package and all its unique deps) then your custom-built programs won't > > find some of their libs anymore... > > > > It is really have to solve those twisted cases. I think the 'manually > installed' bit can solve most of the 'safe deletion' problems and can > be very useful.
I think the person who installed the packages should keep a list of what packages they want and compare that to `pkg_info -t`. > In your hypothetical case, when you install those libraries to be able > to compile your third-party application, the package will be > automatically marked as 'manually installed', meaning that it can only > be removed if you explicitly say so. not if the libraries were installed as dependenies of some other package. that's why this whole "record what was intentionaly installed" thing just won't work as well as you think. > One thing I forgot to mention before is that I have used a couple of > package managers that support this functionality and it works very > well in my experience. It can successfully solve most of the of safely > deletion packages with its dependencies. if you know what packages you want, comparing that list with what's installed is easy. here's a simple scenario: 1) install OBSD 2) pkg_add kdebase 3) pkg_delete --delete-all-dependencies-I-did-not-specifically-add kdebase 4) pkg_add gnome-desktop that would delete and re-add numerous pakages. entirely wasteful. I often intentionally first pkg_add the package I want that brings in the most dependencies (many of which I do want, even if they were not dependencies), because it's easier than specifying all the dependencies. the only way what you suggest could be really useful is if there were a way to "whitelist" installed packages. but isn't it just as easy to keep track of what packages you know you want and compare that to `pkg_info -t`? -- jake...@sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
