Rich Reynolds wrote: > Shawn Walker wrote: >> Chris J wrote: >>> I'd agree with both sides. Package boundaries and dependencies need >>> to be better thought out, but administrators are not going to be >>> happy with IPS if there isn't a way to turn off dependency checking. >>> Too many third party publishers are going to get it wrong. >>> >>> Give us the ability to hang ourselves, since you already gave us ZFS >>> snapshots to undo our mistakes. :) >> >> The issue is that --force options make the system inherently >> unmanageable. Once you do one package with --force, it inevitably >> leads to a system where nothing can be installed, uninstalled, >> updated, etc. without using --force everywhere, and then soon you >> might as well not even use a package management system at all. >> >> The correct answer is to fix the package, and we will be making tools >> available that should make that trivially easily. >> >> Cheers, > > while the ultimate solution is to build all packages perfectly, that may > not exist for some time(ever). so we must allow users to make their own > risk analysis and remover/add things that could break the model. that is > their prerogative as users. as builders of tools me must simply warn > them of the slippery path that they are about to tread. > > we should not make a system expert hostile in the name of user > friendliness.
I don't consider functionality in a system that leaves the user with an unmanageable mess to be "friendly". -- Shawn Walker
