Bug#833310: option to make "forget new" non-interactive as before

[Harald Dunkel]

Maybe it would be possible to ignore the "f" shortcut
altogether, if there are no new packages? That should
be more easy to implement.

Regards
Harri

Bug#833310: [Aptitude-devel] Bug#833310: option to make "forget new" non-interactive as before

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

2016-08-07 10:50 Harald Dunkel:


Also, for me it's hard to imagine why one would bother with "New" for systems 
that one doesn't have a personal interest in monitoring very closely, and receives new 
packages continuously like unstable (e.g. main development system only).



I am not sure if I got this correctly.

This is not about "unstable" or "development systems only", but about
a new aptitude that might be included with Stretch on release date.
Of course Stretch is very volatile today, but this will go away.


I'll try to rephrase.

For me, "New" is a feature only useful when one wants to monitor very
closely what's going on in one's machine.  To see what "New" packages
entered the distribution, for example an interpreter of a new
programming language or a new game, and whether I want to try them or
not.

This --again, for me-- usually happens only in machines or servers that
one wants to be very picky about what to install, and mostly when using
unstable or testing (or well, stable, but in that case "new" packages
don't come very often :-) ).


So for me, this feature is incompatible (as in, not useful at all) with
an scenario like what it was described, managing automatically several
systems to upgrade them often, perhaps every day, and those systems
using completely different distributions.

In that scenario the new packages in each machine are completely
different, so if one does actually want to review them, one has to press
different keys for each of the distributions anyway, because the number
of subtrees and packages is different in that case.  So the cssh method
doesn't work for reviewing those packages at the same time on all hosts.

If one doesn't review them, there's not harm in not pressing "f", the
new packages will just accumulate in that subtree, but there's no other
major consequence.

And if one doesn't review them but press "f" as a matter of habit in
every update, just to not have the "New" subtree at all, the
Aptitude::Forget-New-On-Update config is probably more useful, so one
doesn't even waste time pressing "f" after every upgrade.


So in summary, and coming back to the original title, "forget new" as a
feature is all about interactiveness, and totally contrary to managing
several hosts automatically pressing "f" in all of them without further
considerations.  If it's to use in a non-interactive way, e.g. just
"forget new" always as a matter of course, there are better methods to
deal with it non-interactively.


Cheers.
--
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo 

Bug#833310: [Aptitude-devel] Bug#833310: option to make "forget new" non-interactive as before

[Harald Dunkel]

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Hi Manuel,

On 08/06/16 17:09, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:
> 
> However, it's strange for me to imagine administering systems in different 
> distributions with the input cloned, or which are not almost 100% in sync in 
> terms of packages available, etc.
> 

Trust me, its possible. I have a private set of meta packages (common
for Squeeze, Wheezy Jessie and Stretch) to keep the hosts in sync.

> Some basic keys might work, but as soon as one has to decide between 
> different upgrade solutions or similar cases, things can get wrong very 
> quickly.  Would be probably easier to use the command line in that case 
> (update lists && upgrade), and interactive when things get complicated.

Of course resolving package conflicts might be difficult and require
manual interaction restricted to a few hosts only, esp. for Unstable.
cssh does support this approach. Point is, using the new aptitude on
Stretch will make this go wrong every time. I would like to avoid this.

> But well, I guess that people do these things.
> 
> 
> Also, for me it's hard to imagine why one would bother with "New" for systems 
> that one doesn't have a personal interest in monitoring very closely, and 
> receives new packages continuously like unstable (e.g. main development 
> system only).
> 

I am not sure if I got this correctly.

This is not about "unstable" or "development systems only", but about
a new aptitude that might be included with Stretch on release date.
Of course Stretch is very volatile today, but this will go away.


Regards
Harri

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Bug#833310: [Aptitude-devel] Bug#833310: option to make "forget new" non-interactive as before

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

2016-08-06 12:52 Axel Beckert:

Hi Manuel,

Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:

>Since "forget new" became interactive the new aptitude behaves
>differently than aptitude in older versions. This makes managing
>a set of hosts in parallel via tools like "cssh" pretty painful.
>Some host require an additional confirmation step (for a trivial
>operation).

[...]

If it's the curses interface, instead of 'f' you just have to press
(inject?) 'f+Enter', so for me it's quite trivial and I don't think
that you mean this case.


I'm very sure that's exactly the case he meant.

Imagine the following: Use cssh. mssh, pconsole, tmux or any other
tool which multiplexes keyboard input onto multiple machines via SSH:

One machine is running Testing and one machine Unstable.

Now you type "aptitude[" and you see on both machines the
opened branch of the New Packages list. Now you press "f" and one
machine already forgot the New Packages list while the other still
needs you to press "". But if you press "" on both, the
Testing machine opens one level of the Upgradable Packages list
instead.

Does this help you to understand what Harald wants?


Yes, it does, thanks.

However, it's strange for me to imagine administering systems in
different distributions with the input cloned, or which are not almost
100% in sync in terms of packages available, etc.

Some basic keys might work, but as soon as one has to decide between
different upgrade solutions or similar cases, things can get wrong very
quickly.  Would be probably easier to use the command line in that case
(update lists && upgrade), and interactive when things get complicated.
But well, I guess that people do these things.


Also, for me it's hard to imagine why one would bother with "New" for
systems that one doesn't have a personal interest in monitoring very
closely, and receives new packages continuously like unstable (e.g. main
development system only).

Either I would never use forget-new in that case, or perhaps will always
forget new from the command line... or better yet use
"Aptitude::Forget-New-On-Update" to never have to bother with doing this
by hand every time that I update the lists.


... In any case, for the purpose of the bug, I suppose that the issue
will sort itself as soon as the version in unstable moves to testing,
which hopefully will be Real Soon Now (TM).


Cheers.
--
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo 

Bug#833310: [Aptitude-devel] Bug#833310: option to make "forget new" non-interactive as before

[Axel Beckert]

Hi Manuel,

Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:
> >Since "forget new" became interactive the new aptitude behaves
> >differently than aptitude in older versions. This makes managing
> >a set of hosts in parallel via tools like "cssh" pretty painful.
> >Some host require an additional confirmation step (for a trivial
> >operation).
[...]
> If it's the curses interface, instead of 'f' you just have to press
> (inject?) 'f+Enter', so for me it's quite trivial and I don't think
> that you mean this case.

I'm very sure that's exactly the case he meant.

Imagine the following: Use cssh. mssh, pconsole, tmux or any other
tool which multiplexes keyboard input onto multiple machines via SSH:

One machine is running Testing and one machine Unstable.

Now you type "aptitude[" and you see on both machines the
opened branch of the New Packages list. Now you press "f" and one
machine already forgot the New Packages list while the other still
needs you to press "". But if you press "" on both, the
Testing machine opens one level of the Upgradable Packages list
instead.

Does this help you to understand what Harald wants?

Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert , http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `'   |  4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329  6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5
  `-|  1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486  202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE

Bug#833310: option to make "forget new" non-interactive as before

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Control: tags -1 + moreinfo


Hi,

2016-08-02 19:51 Harald Dunkel:

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Package: aptitude
Version: 0.8.2-1
Severity: wishlist

Since "forget new" became interactive the new aptitude behaves
differently than aptitude in older versions. This makes managing
a set of hosts in parallel via tools like "cssh" pretty painful.
Some host require an additional confirmation step (for a trivial
operation).


You'll have to be more precise... is this the command line?  What does
it mean to become interactive?  Which command exactly, and what happens?



Would it be possible to switch this feature off by default, to
make aptitude work as for previous Debian releases?


If it's the command line there's an option to turn interactivity off or
confirming by default if it bothers you.  Perhaps you can use it in this
case.

If it's the curses interface, instead of 'f' you just have to press
(inject?) 'f+Enter', so for me it's quite trivial and I don't think that
you mean this case.


Cheers.
--
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo 

Bug#833310: option to make "forget new" non-interactive as before

[Harald Dunkel]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.8.2-1
Severity: wishlist

Since "forget new" became interactive the new aptitude behaves
differently than aptitude in older versions. This makes managing
a set of hosts in parallel via tools like "cssh" pretty painful.
Some host require an additional confirmation step (for a trivial
operation).

Would it be possible to switch this feature off by default, to
make aptitude work as for previous Debian releases?


Thanx in advance
Harri
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