>>>>> On Mon, 10 Aug 2009, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> unfortunately this is what happens in current eselect-news.
[bunch of bash error messages deleted]
Good catch. The news-tng module of eselect-1.1* handles it more
gracefully (no bash errors), but it still displays an error message.
> This is because the old entry stays in
> /var/lib/gentoo/news/news-gentoo.read
Seems that we have no real procedure for removal of news items.
Unfortunately GLEP 42 only says that they can be removed, but doesn't
specify what should happen with the entry in the news-*.unread or
news-*.read file.
Since the package manager adds these lines, I guess that it would be
its task to delete them from news-*.{unread,read} if the news item
itself was removed. Or should the eselect module handle it?
> So what to do? Fix eselect first and then do the rename? Rename now,
> recommend purge, and fix eselect later?
Seems that just keeping the item with the bad name will cause least
breakage for users. Sigh.
> Update GLEP 42 to allow dots in news item filenames?
Please don't.
> Any technical reason they are not allowed, except for hypothetical
> compatibility (nothing broken was reported due to this item yet).
The news-tng module has an option to export news items in mbox format,
and needs to generate message-ids for this. It's natural to generate
their local part from the news item's name, and then it's good to be
conservative on the allowed character set.
Ulrich
