Excerpts from Philip Brown's message of Mon Jan 24 09:14:49 -0500 2011: > 1. having it registered in mantis. I'm thinking it would be nice to > NOT register it
This isn't a bad idea, but it would complicate a process that is seemingly already fragile. Bugs can be moved in the DB. If it's a real package, although only a stub, treat it as such. A GAR-built stub will contain a license file at a minimum. The fewer special cases we have, the better. > 2. having another file almost needlessly sitting in our archives Yes, it's hard to avoid this if a real package file is used. You're correct in saying that it's a survivable artifact. > 3. having a "fake package" being actually installed on the user side > when thats not what they really need To this I'd say, use the postmsg CAS to inform the user that the package can be removed as it's just a stub. No need to jump through extra hoops to have it perform a non-installation. It is serving a valid purpose for the user that installed it, thus it's not hurting anything on that system. The opposite of using a package for this involves many things that are less desirable: 1. Catalog format modification or (and I think better), creation of a third file to reside with catalog and descriptions named aliases. Tools would need updates to take this into account either way it's done. - Updating tools to add functionality isn't a bad thing, but it is a lot of extra work and requires coordination among several tools/people. 2. Additional process creation for maintenance of these aliases. Eg: in the package submission mail, maintainers says "oh, hey, add this alias too..." and then some file manipulation happens, etc. - This is the real pita, I think. 3. A mismatch between requested packages and installed packages on the system. The opposite of your #3 above. - This is harmless, but possibly confusing for an admin. "Hey, I installed webpy, where is it..." Thanks -Ben -- Ben Walton Systems Programmer - CHASS University of Toronto C:416.407.5610 | W:416.978.4302 -- Ben Walton Systems Programmer - CHASS University of Toronto C:416.407.5610 | W:416.978.4302 _______________________________________________ maintainers mailing list [email protected] https://lists.opencsw.org/mailman/listinfo/maintainers .:: This mailing list's archive is public. ::.
