Hi,
On Sat, 2005-03-12 at 19:03 +0100, Michelle Konzack wrote:
> > BTW: Why are you so resistant to the suggested change? Which harm would
> > it do? (Are you calling "aptitude download <package>" for the "file"
> > case if you _don't_ want the .deb file in the current directory?)
>
> Because most people do not need to have the Package twice in there
> filesystem. If there where the default aptitude will eat up your
> diskspace.
Well, when a user says: "Put me this file into the local directory!" (as
documented in the aptitude manpage), it's no surprise if the disk (if it
is rather small or already nearly full) is eaten up sooner or later. :)
Please don't try to prevent users from using certain functionality in
their software that _you_ think is not useful.
> Maybe there should be a second option like --download-local
That would be a kludge, and still bearing the word "download".
> And, why do you need the file twice, if you have access to the
> local filesystem ?
Usually, one doesn't need to justify the use of the tools to Debian
users, but let's explain this in more detail:
I'm using automated scripts that fetch arbitrary .deb files to inspect
their contents (in DARTS, a Debian quality assurance tool connected with
the pbuilder project). Therefore, I need aptitude to get me a .deb on an
arbitrary host that just somehow has got an appropriate mirror
repository referenced from /etc/apt/sources.list. Since it's not
predictable how the administrator of such a test box in the distributed
cluster has configured this one ("http", "ftp", "file" or "copy"), it
would be highly useful to have aptitude to behave in the same way (and
_as documented_) for all possible configurations. (It's hard to explain
to sysadmins that they need "copy" instead of "file" which could result
in the same problem you tried to prevent.)
So we are talking about scriptability, not the fact that it is somehow
possible to copy a file manually from somewhere.
I'm using aptitude because apt-get doesn't have such a feature at all.
Maybe I should enhance apt-get, but this would
(1) not solve the aptitude issue at hand (discrepancy between man page
and behaviour)
(2) move the same problem to apt-get
(3) be unnecessarily redundant
Furthermore, consider the use of the word "download" in this context in
the following way: "transfer the file to the current directory".
Thanks for considering.
bye,
Roland
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
