Re: Appropriate warning when removing important package

[Matthew Palmer]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 12:06:56PM -0700, Jeremy Leibs wrote:
> We have kind of a unique environment in that many of the (somewhat
> naive) system users have root-access for installing new packages on an
> as-needed basis, but the development environment itself has some
> specific requirements.  For example, we require libboost1.37-dev over
> libboost-dev.
> 
> I have create a trivial deb called "ros-conflicts" which just
> explicitly conflicts with the packages we need to avoid.
> 
> Unfortunately, when users are doing large apt-get installs, they will
> just blindly hit "yes" without thoroughly inspecting the list of
> packages which may be removed, putting their system in an unusable
> (from a development standpoint) state.
> 
> My initial workaround was to just add "Essential: yes" to the
> ros-conficts control file so that now users get a much more serious
> warning when they try to install a package that conflicts with it.
> However, this feels like a misuse of "essential."

  Works for me.  They're essential packages for your environment, so
why not mark them as such?  Uploading them to Debian would be a no-no, but I
think that's not real likely.

- Matt


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Re: Appropriate warning when removing important package

[Russ Allbery]

Jeremy Leibs  writes:

> My initial workaround was to just add "Essential: yes" to the
> ros-conficts control file so that now users get a much more serious
> warning when they try to install a package that conflicts with it.
> However, this feels like a misuse of "essential."

> Is there a preferred way to present an appropriate warning to people
> when a particularly important package is about to be removed?

If I were you, I'd use Essential.  That's basically what it's for, and in
this sort of situation for a custom package for a local environment, I
think it would create the impact you want with the least customization to
Debian required.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   


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Appropriate warning when removing important package

[Jeremy Leibs]

We are attempting to use the debian package system to streamline the
process of setting up the operating system for our software developers
and robotics research platforms.

We have kind of a unique environment in that many of the (somewhat
naive) system users have root-access for installing new packages on an
as-needed basis, but the development environment itself has some
specific requirements.  For example, we require libboost1.37-dev over
libboost-dev.

I have create a trivial deb called "ros-conflicts" which just
explicitly conflicts with the packages we need to avoid.

Unfortunately, when users are doing large apt-get installs, they will
just blindly hit "yes" without thoroughly inspecting the list of
packages which may be removed, putting their system in an unusable
(from a development standpoint) state.

My initial workaround was to just add "Essential: yes" to the
ros-conficts control file so that now users get a much more serious
warning when they try to install a package that conflicts with it.
However, this feels like a misuse of "essential."

Is there a preferred way to present an appropriate warning to people
when a particularly important package is about to be removed?

Thanks,
--Jeremy Leibs


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