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On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 01:07:29PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote: > On Tue, 03 Jun 2008, Robert Millan wrote: > > On Sat, May 31, 2008 at 01:25:25PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote: > > > I think this shows clearly there's an unresolved transition here. > > > I understand bash-completion shouldn't be Essential, but the > > > process for moving it out isn't being done properly. It's not > > > acceptable that end users get this functionality silently disabled > > > without any obvious explanation (they might not even know which > > > package provides it, or how). > > The release notes can trivially deal with this by suggesting (as they > currently do!) that users use aptitude, which even in etch, handles > Recommends: properly. They can also mention this specific problem, and > handle the general class of problems where packages have been demoted > to Recommends and/or split. Notice that according to popcon less than 24% of users run aptitude (18699 / 78518). I don't see how suggesting use of aptitude in the release notes will bring that close to 100%; in fact I doubt it would have any significant impact (but it doesn't hurt to do it anyway, IMHO). Besides, we're assuming that aptitude is a suitable replacement for apt in all situations, which may not necessarily be so. If you're really confident that it is, to be consistent you should IMO propose that apt becomes a dummy dependency on aptitude instead. > Making bash-completion a dependency of bash obviates one of the > important advantages of splitting out bash-completion: the ability to > not have bash-completion installed. That would be if the dependency were to last indefinitely. The ability to not have bash-completion installed was (AFAICT) the whole point of the package split. My concern is simply that no transition path has been contemplated. As a result the burden of figuring out why hitting TAB misteriusly stopped working is put on the majority of users, just so that a minority doesn't have to wait untill the transition is complete to free 216 kiB from their disk. > I suggest reassigning this bug to release notes with the following > suggested verbiage: > > If you use apt-get to upgrade to lenny, you should first upgrade apt > to the version in lenny, and then complete the upgrade to lenny > using that version. The version of apt in lenny properly handles > packages which have been split, with significant features only > Recommended: by the unsplit packages. Looks fine to me, but please clone instead of reassigning. -- Robert Millan <GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call! <DRM> What good is a phone call… if you are unable to speak? (as seen on /.) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
