Bart Smaalders wrote:
> Ed McKnight wrote:
>> Suggestion: IPS to implement a package attribute, 'metapackage=true,' 
>> which would mean that the contained dependencies would be treated as 
>> reversed during uninstall, thus enabling the dependencies both to be 
>> automatically installed and uninstalled. Maybe there should be 
>> enforcement that nothing other than dependencies are contained, but I'm 
>> not sure it's necessary.
>>
> 
> We've talked about this; it's probably actually an attribute of the 
> dependency or a different type of dependency rather than an attribute
> of the containing package.
> 
> Some of this is waiting on our completion of capturing user intent,
> for the following reason:
> 
> pkg install foo
> pkg install bar, which has a "meta-dependency" on foo
> pkg uninstall bar
> 
> should not uninstall foo, whereas in the case of:
> 
> pkg install bar, which has a "meta-dependency" on foo
> pkg uninstall bar
> 
> it should... we cannot do this correctly w/o recording user intent.
> 

Bart,

I'm not following why you need to capture user intent in the scenario 
you outline. The two situations should be distinguishable from the 
package installation history alone.

Alternatively, couldn't we have a flag to uninstall that says that the 
metapackage and all packages on which it depends should be uninstalled?

Stepping back, what's the timeframe for implementing a solution to the 
uninstall problem? In the product that Ed mentions (Sun Cluster) we're 
going to easily have 30 or 40 packages. We really don't want the user to 
have to specify each package explicitly in order to uninstall 
clustering. Any guidance on a workaround? What do you think about Ed's 
suggestion of a "removal metapackage?"

Thanks,
Nick
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