On 10/5/24 20:27, vixfwis wrote:
Hi all,
Is this something pacman devs would be interested in adding to pacman? I found myself wanting such a feature a couple of times in the past, and after a recent reddit post I tried to make it a thing
https://github.com/vixfwis/pacman <https://github.com/vixfwis/pacman> https://github.com/vixfwis/pacman-xdata <https://github.com/vixfwis/pacman-xdata>
Common use case - adding and searching for user notes in installed packages. Those notes would be inside the %XDATA% field in localdb. My current implementation has a simple --xdata <key>=<value> param for -S-U operations, which is then added to the current transaction packages in sync_prepare_execute. As well as -Q --xdata-search <regex> param, which allows for searching. Changes affect pacman and libalpm, although no existing exported libalpm functions were changed
What do you think?
I am OK with this idea. Some immediate thoughts: 1) On -S operations, should notes be added to all packages installed or only those specifically mentioned on the command line. I think the latter (but potential interesting interaction with group selection?) 2) only user notes should be transferred across package upgrades. If a package file has an xdata field for one release and not the next, it should not be transferred. Does pacman need to add a "user:" prefix to the xdata to handle this? 2b) should notes with a "user:" prefix be printed with -Qi and not just -Qii? 3) we need a way to delete notes. -D seems the best place for this (and for adding notes to already installed packages). Allan