On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 04:33:36PM -0800, Remi Mommsen wrote: > On Jan 20, 2005, at 6:47 AM, Christian Schaffner wrote: > > > >We recommend more and more often to use the debfoster fink package to > >keep track of unneeded packages on a Fink installation. One problem > >that users are facing with debfoster is that it asks to remove too > >many packages during the first run: It asks to remove essential > >packages, and "important" packages (e.g. apt), and even debfoster > >itself. If a user is not carfull the system might end up unusable due > >to e.g. a missing apt while running with UseBinaryDist.
That's not an "unusable" state, since fink will merely issue a "please install the apt pkg" warning. But anyway... > >There are two things that were discussed on #fink today to solve this > >problem: > > > >1. > >Let the package 'debfoster' depend on apt. If debfoster uses apt, then debfoster should Depends:apt, since apt is not an Essential pkg (nor should it be IMO). That's a pretty fundamental packaging issue. > >2. > >Install a default '/sw/var/lib/debfoster/keepers' file with the > >debfoster package (or with the base-file package). It should have the > >names of all essential and important packages and debfoster itself as > >entries. > > > >The package should of cause check for an already existing keepers file > >(probably through the ConfFiles field in the info file). I don't know exactly how debfoster uses this keepers file, but assuming it's the "live" list of intentionally installed pkgs, gotta be very careful how to handle upgrades. The list of Essential files can change...don't want to don't want to overwrite a live datafile. > >What is the general opinion about that? Remi? > > I would opt for (2), as this is a more general solution than having a > dependency on apt. I'll see if I can come up with a solution this > week-end (or if anyone feels like doing it, the better). > > A quick search gave me the following list of essential packages: > apt > base-files > bzip2 > bzip2-shlibs > cctools-extra > debfoster > debianutils > dpkg > fink-mirrors > fink-prebinding > fink > gettext > libiconv > libiconv-bin > ncurses > ncurses-shlibs > tar > unzip Case in point: fink is in the process of switching from ncurses* to libncurses*, and maybe dropping tar and unzip. When the installed libncurses5-shlibs suddenly became Essential:yes a few weeks ago, apt and dpkg immediately knew about it. However, this type of change is independent of fink itself (i.e., no new "fink" pkg was released), so distributing a keepers file as part of the fink pkg (or any other pkg) seems like just one more pkg-sync headache. dan -- Daniel Macks [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.netspace.org/~dmacks ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IntelliVIEW -- Interactive Reporting Tool for open source databases. Create drag-&-drop reports. Save time by over 75%! Publish reports on the web. Export to DOC, XLS, RTF, etc. Download a FREE copy at http://www.intelliview.com/go/osdn_nl _______________________________________________ Fink-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
