[Mageia-dev] Orphans - those poor orphans . . .

Sat Jan 7 07:41:43 CET 2012

2012/1/6 Guillaume Rousse <guillomovitch at gmail.com>:
+> Le 06/01/2012 16:13, Wolfgang Bornath a écrit :
+>
+>> Ah, I see your reasoning, of course, if the packager forgot to name
+>> the requires then urpmi declares them as orphans. But then, to be
+>> safe, you have to forget about auto-orphans altogether because you can
+>> not be sure that all packagers did their homework.
+>
+> Then you have to forget about using packages because you're not sure
+> packagers did their work correctly.
+
+I'd argue like that as well if we were in court. But it's not the
+same: if a packager misses something and the installation does not
+work, so what? I can use another package or distribution. But if he
+causes urpmi to regard a needed package as orphan and lets me remove
+it the system can break, now that is a problem.
+
+> So far, still no one proved than 'orphan' status was wrong regarding urpmi
+> definition of what is an orphan package, rather than regarding their own
+> personal expectation.
+
+Yes, because the user does not care about any such definitions when he
+reads on the console or in rpmdrake "These packages are orphans now,
+you can safely remove them". I'd suggest to change this sentence ASAP
+into "If you are sure that it will not break anything you can remove
+them now". This would be a better advice for the user than "you can
+safely remove".
+
+-- 
+wobo
+