On 19.10.2010 21:25, Xavier Chantry wrote:

But my new provision selection inspired to both Jakob and Dan that we could have the same for groups, so I went ahead and implemented it over the weekend.

Do it like yaourt (it prompts the user when doing -Syu) and open an editor with one package per line. If a user doesn't want to install a certain package he can just delete or comment(#) the line. I don't know how to handle dependencies here (foo needs bar, but the user removes bar), but I think you could just ask for those with a simple yes/no afterwards. -- Florian Pritz -- {flo,bluewind}@server-speed.net

On 20/10/10 05:25, Xavier Chantry wrote:

One part of what's on http://code.toofishes.net/cgit/xavier/pacman.git/log/?h=working is about proposing a new interactive selection for installing groups. I did not like the old one, because I don't want to answer 50 questions when I install one group with 50 members. This is ugly, and the selection is not easily reproducible, for example you cannot easily copy/paste the answers of one run to another. I think a text frontend really sucks for this kind of workflow, a graphical or at least ncurses frontend would do much better.

But my new provision selection inspired to both Jakob and Dan that we could have the same for groups, so I went ahead and implemented it over the weekend.

$ pacman -S base-devel :: There are 11 members in group base-devel: :: Repository testing 1) make :: Repository core 2) autoconf 3) automake 4) bison 5) fakeroot 6) flex 7) gcc 8) libtool 9) m4 10) patch 11) pkg-config Which ones do you want to install? Enter a number (default=all):

Multiple choices are possible, separated by spaces. Either single number or a range a-b. Both single numbers and range can be negated with ^ prefix. Choices are applied successively, so each choice override previous ones (in case of conflict). If first choice is negative, all targets are implicitly selected, otherwise no target is implicitly selected.

Examples : 1) 3 6 8 : install automake, flex and libtool 2) 2-11 : install all targets in core repo 3) ^1 or 1-11 ^1 : install everything but make (like 2)) 4) ^2-11 : install everything but targets 2-11, i.e. only testing/make is left

No idea how practical / user-friendly it is, so feedback and testing welcome.

My general impression of this is that it is really, really good and a great improvement over what we have now or had in the past. Here are relatively minor comments: The "Enter a number" selection prompt is a bit weirdly worded when using e.g. "1-10 ^8". Maybe "Enter selection" instead? If the "selected 1" output is to stay (is it?), it should maybe say "selected <pkg>" instead? Also, using "1-10 ^8" says "selected 8... unselected 8". If that output is to say, I guess that should just say "unselected 8" maybe? Doing a "pacman -S base --needed" processes the --needed after the selection dialog which is annoying... is that easily changed? It does not matter if not. Allan