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

Sat Jan 7 11:18:40 CET 2012

Sander Lepik a écrit :
+> 07.01.2012 01:09, Johnny A. Solbu kirjutas:
+>> On Friday 06 January 2012 18:54, Balcaen John wrote:
+>>> I guess when you did encounter that you just remove task-kde from 
+>>> your system
+>> I did not. I should have been more clearly with my example. :-)=
+>> The packages in my example where all console program, that I 
+>> installed and removed using urpm[ie]. So I explicitly removed only 
+>> the one program I just installed. And it did not install any other 
+>> packages, as a result of dependencies.
+>>
+>> And this is my point. We uninstall a specific program, not a 
+>> meta/task package, which result in some packages beeing marked as 
+>> orphaned, when they are infact Not orphaned.
+> Give us command line example. Install something and remove it and then 
+> show me what got orphaned if it wasn't orphan before. What you claim 
+> here doesn't sound right as i haven't seen it myself.
+>
+> -- 
+> Sander
+
+It is not exactly the same thing, but in more than one occasion when I 
+installed packages with similar functions at the same time, to compare 
+them, say A, B, and C, and later uninstalled B and C, I have found A to 
+be declared an orphan.  Only to find that it had been required by one of 
+the others.
+(I often prefer command-line packages.  It is simple to add them to the 
+menu if I want.  And I have often enough made such comparisons.  To be 
+fair, I haven't done much of that since installing Mageia, when it first 
+became available.)
+
+Really though, we should consider how people work with installing software.
+
+The auto-orphans option and how it currently works is based on the 
+assumption that if package A is installed as a requirement of package B, 
+that on uninstalling B, one will want to uninstall A.  That to me is a 
+false premise.
+It is likely to be the case, but not necessarily.
+Generally users will use the graphic installer (rpmdrake), as it is more 
+convenient.  When the question of orphans is presented, if it is 
+presented, one should be presented with the same options that are 
+presented on installation with required packages.  That is, to be able 
+to query the description ("more info") of the associated packages, and 
+thus readily make an informed decision of what to remove.
+As well, the message should be that the orphaned packages "may" be no 
+longer useful, instead of saying that they can be safely removed.
+Sure, in terms of not being strictly required by other packages, they 
+can be safely removed, but if I had always followed the auto-orphan 
+advice, I would have uninstalled gnome on more than one occasion.  
+(Which is my usual desktop environment.)
+
+What is more important is what is needed for the user to be able to use 
+their computer as they wish, with the packages providing the functions 
+they wish.  In that sense, auto-orphans does indeed break systems.
+
+My 2 cents :)
+
+-- 
+André
+
+