[arch-general] Shouldn't pacman restart dovecot after update?

[Peter Lewis]

Hi,

On Wednesday 04 Aug 2010 at 06:22 Andreas Radke wrote:
> You seem to want to use a distribution made safe for less skilled
> users. Why do you keep wasting our time suggesting to make Arch
> something it's not meant to be???

I don't think that David necessarily does want this, and I hope no one will 
mind mind if I say that I don't think this is really a very helpful response. 
David has come to the list and asked a question, since pacman didn't behave 
the way he expected it to (albeit from experience from other distros) - which 
is valid.

David's original question of "why didn't/shouldn't pacman restart dovecot" has 
been answered and I don't think that anyone thinks that paman should start 
doing things like that.

I've learnt a reasonable amount about linux over the years, and a lot of it 
has been through asking (perhaps naive) questions on mailing lists. One thing 
I've learnt is that there's always someone who knows more than you and thinks 
your question is trivial, and there's always someone who barely understands 
what you're asking. It's not about overall world-of-warcraft-style linux skill 
points, it's just about where your knowledge is focused. For example, I just 
checked and I have 1394 packages installed on my laptop. I'll be damned if I 
can remember the eccentricities of all of them!

> If Arch doesn't fit you needs you shouldn't use.

This is of course true, but in order to appreciate the beauty of a simple 
distro like Arch, one has to understand *why* Arch does things the way it does 
IMO. One way of doing this (of course in addition to reading the wiki etc) is 
to ask around. No one individual is obliged to answer.

> If package updates and restarting a daemon is hard to handle for you
> should really think about this. You seem to hold the record in the last
> months for silly questions about updating and using our distribution.

Not helpful. See above.


WARNING: Constructive part of the post!! :-)

> If you think you need a list of packages to remember where you should
> interact, go on and create one your own.

Absolutely, why not? If someone really wants to implement this, why not have a 
flag set somewhere that tells pacman whether you want "package hints" or 
something turned on. Then let packages set a one line package hint. Not for 
everyone, but some people with poor memories (like me) might find it useful.

Patches welcome?

Cheers,

Pete.