Package: dpkg
Version: 1.16.10
Severity: wishlist
Hi.
May I suggest to add optional colourisation of dpkg's output (perhaps even
making the
colours configurable per category).
Non only on dist-upgrades but also on day-to-day's upgrades (especially for
those people
using sid) one sees countless of lines of "standard dpkg output", most
prominently things
like:
- Preparing to replace foo 1.0 (using .../foo_2.0-1_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement foo ...
- Setting up foo (2.0-1) ...
but also the less oftem messages like:
- (Reading database ... ?%
- Processing triggers for ?
Quite frankly, these are usually boring... as (usually) nothing interesting
happens on
them.
So I'd suggest to take a "less visible" colour for like grey.
I could however imagine to emphasise some of the information of these lines,
which are
at least a bit interesting in normal cases, like for:
- Preparing to replace foo 1.0 (using .../foo_2.0-1_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement foo ...
- Setting up foo (2.0-1) ...
=> the package name and version (not the deb file path)
or for
- Processing triggers for ?
=> the kind of triggers (e.g. man-db, doc-base or whatever)
For these I'd use bold or a bit lighter (or darker grey).
Now back to the main problem,... as all these messages from above have the same
colour
right now, than everything else,... it can easily happen, that really important
and/or
interesting messages are overseen in them.
Examples:
1) Output from the maintainer scripts:
...
Setting up openjdk-7-doc (7u21-2.3.9-4) ...
Setting up openjdk-7-jre-headless:amd64 (7u21-2.3.9-4) ...
update-binfmts: warning: current package is openjdk-7, but binary format
already installed by openjdk-6
Setting up openjdk-7-jre-lib (7u21-2.3.9-4) ...
Setting up openjdk-7-jre:amd64 (7u21-2.3.9-4) ...
Setting up openjdk-7-demo (7u21-2.3.9-4) ...
...
or
...
Setting up librpmsign1 (4.10.3.1-1) ...
Setting up rpm (4.10.3.1-1) ...
Setting up man-db (2.6.3-5) ...
Updating database of manual pages ...
Setting up libgmpxx4ldbl:amd64 (2:5.1.1+dfsg-3) ...
Setting up libppl12:amd64 (1:1.0-6) ...
Setting up libppl-c4:amd64 (1:1.0-6) ...
...
2) config files changes
Setting up libreoffice-style-tango (1:4.0.3-1) ...
Setting up libreoffice-common (1:4.0.3-1) ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/libreoffice/sofficerc ...
Setting up libreoffice-java-common (1:4.0.3-1) ...
Setting up libreoffice-base (1:4.0.3-1) ...
3) files that couldn't be created/removed/etc.
Preparing to replace python2.7-minimal 2.7.3-8 (using
.../python2.7-minimal_2.7.5-1_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement python2.7-minimal ...
dpkg: warning: unable to delete old directory '/etc/python2.7': Directory
not empty
Selecting previously unselected package libpython2.7-minimal.
Unpacking libpython2.7-minimal (from
.../libpython2.7-minimal_2.7.5-1_amd64.deb) ...
4) newly installed packages and package removals
...
Selecting previously unselected package libxtables10.
Unpacking libxtables10 (from .../libxtables10_1.4.18-1_amd64.deb) ...
...
respectively
...
Removing libprocps0:amd64 ...
Purging configuration files for libprocps0:amd64 ...
...
=> Well in principle these are the same "boring" standard messages than those
from upgrade,
the difference is that (usually) there are far less packages
removed/installed than
upgraded. So it might be a good idea to allow thes lines be coloursed (at
best via some
configuration, whether or not)... maybe it's also good to just colourise
the important
words like "Removing" and/or "Purging" instead of the whole lines
So if that was ever implemented, I'd perhaps suggest the following general
ideas:
- The "boring" output should be grey per default, with the more interesting
parts of them
(package names, version numbers - see above) some very similar grey (darker,
lighter, bold or
something like that).
- Output from the maintainer scripts to stdout, should be (per default) the
default colour,
i.e. not changing the colour of that at all. This is usefull, as that might
be even already
colourised.
- Output from the maintainer scripts to stderr should be red.
- Error ouput from dpkg (like (3) above) should be perhaps purple.
- Informational output like e.g. (2) above should perhaps be cyan.
- etc. pp..
- output that is not categorized should be considered "interesting" and get
perhaps the colour
orange (or I guess brown is the most similar colour on the console).
Cheers,
Chris.
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
