On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 01:48:57PM -0800, lianep at eng.sun.com wrote: > David Bustos writes: > > Quoth lianep at eng.sun.com on Tue, Feb 06, 2007 at 05:50:11PM -0800: > > > Delete use cases: > > > [...] > > > > > > Upgrade use cases: > > > - pkgrm/pkgadd combination for packages that don't support upgrade > > > in-place. Users' customizations on the service should be > > > preserved. > > > > Aren't these contradictory? During the pkgrm, how can we tell whether > > we're supposed to remove customizations or leave them? I believe the > > packaging system assumes customizations are in editable files and just > > leaves them after a pkgrm, in anticipation of a pkgadd. We don't do > > that in the repository today, but we could with Enhanced Profiles. > > I tried to articulate the behaviour that folks seem to expect, and was > concerned about the contradictory-ness of those expectations when I > wrote it. In other words, thanks for the catch. :) > > Perhaps the requirement could be written to say that user customizations > are preserved, and users need an explicit way to revert to an > as-shipped configuration?
Ugh. It'd be so much nicer if packages just supported instance update and pkgadd made it easier to use that. The package framework for it is already mostly in place. Then pkgrm could mean "delete this, including customizations" and pkgadd could mean "add or update, preserving customizations." But though the pkg system does support a notion of pkg updates, it does so poorly and we don't use it, so we're stuck with pkgrm + pkgadd for updates. So the question becomes: how do we distinguish between "forget customizations" and "keep customizations"? I.e., what interface do we provide by which the user can make this distinction? A pkgadd response option could do it, but that's hard to use. And it doesn't give the user a way to uninstall a package such that no traces are left of it. But as long as update -> pkgrm + pkgadd then we'll need a pkgadd-time option. This strikes me as an issue that goes well beyond SMF. Nico --
