On Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 04:02:03PM -0500, Daniel Burrows wrote: > On Wednesday 15 December 2004 03:37 pm, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > > > ? It seems like "Unknown" would just be a synonym for "No", right? > > > > Uh, yes. I think. > > > > You may want to explain that a bit more. > > Well, from the bug report, it looks like the proposal is to maintain the > current behavior, but to set a different flag on packages that were > conservatively assumed to be manually installed, so they can be switched > later to automatic handling if desired. Sounds useful.
Well, in that case, not entirely. You may also want to set a flag on packages that are assumed to be automatically installed, but of which you have no information. Consider libgnome2-perl: people may want to install that, even if there is no dependency, to allow for debconf to provide a gnome frontend; however, I can imagine there are also packages that have a dependency on libgnome2-perl. Now consider a user who recently switched to aptitude after having used a different frontend for a long while; this user had installed libgnome2-perl manually (for the debconf frontend), but later on installed just one package depending on libgnome2-perl to see what it does. At that time, the switch to aptitude was made; but then the user decided that the package using libgnome2-perl isn't useful enough, and removes it again. What debfoster will do in that case, is present the user with libgnome2-perl (and all packages whom only libgnome2-perl depends on and for which no preference is yet known), and ask whether they should be removed. I really think this is the right thing to do in such a situation. -- EARTH smog | bricks AIR -- mud -- FIRE soda water | tequila WATER -- with thanks to fortune