Hey, On 24/03/14 11:22, Andrei POPESCU wrote: > Package: how-can-i-help > Severity: wishlist > > On Du, 23 mar 14, 23:43:18, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: >> >> Moving non-free packages to non-free.org would be a good way to highlight >> that those packages are not part of Debian. >> However, I wonder if we couldn't do more in terms of notifying users that >> the package they are installing is in non-free. Currently, what happens is >> that you add 'non-free' in sources.list, but then you kind-of forget about >> it, and packages from main, contrib and non-free are just the same from the >> POV of 'apt-cache search' or 'apt-get install'. It could be interesting to >> explore the idea of asking for an install-time confirmation when the user >> wants to install non-free packages. > > Maybe how-can-i-help could show packages installed from non-free (and > contrib?) under a 'would be nice if these had free replacements' > category, though I'm aware this is more an upstream issue :-/
While the idea is interesting, I do see a few issues: 1. Isn't this feature too close to what vrms already does [1]? True, it doesn't (AFAIK) check the source of the package, but it not only shows which packages are non free but also explains what makes a package non-free. 2. At the moment, how-can-i-help fetches only information related to packages containing specific types of bugs. To implement this new feature (and don't disclose the list of installed packages) we would have to download complete list of non-free packages or check all installed packages on the user side. Neither is supported by how-can-i-help and I do feel that it is slightly outside of our scope. 3. Even if we implemented it as stated in (2.), we would show this new information only once, unless used called with '--old' switch. Non-free status doesn't change that often, and updating/installing would usually show no new information here. However, we could probably [2] add a tag/note/etc. to non-free opportunities, indicating their status. This might be useful for Orphaned or RFA packages. What do you think? Regards, T. [1] https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=vrms [2] I'll check it out - be it on UDD (#742245) or user side.
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