[arch-general] Ye Olde Package Manager

[Ng Oon-Ee]

On Sun, 2011-01-16 at 12:22 +0100, Frédéric Perrin wrote:
> Le dimanche 16 à 2:01, Allan McRae a écrit :
> > There has been low interest in a real database solution due to
> > potential issues recovering from corrupt databases and with the
> > additional dependencies.  
> 
> A question from a random user (one that won't submit more patches than
> the average user):
> 
> Why would a database be more subject to corruption than a tar file, and
> harder to recover?
> 
An answer from an average user: I believe in tar files corruption would
only affect the files stored at that 'place' in the tar files. So for
example if there's a failing HD and 20 sections are affected, 'only'
that information is lost.

For a database which is necessarily more complicated, the whole database
may be a write-off.

Of course, if there's a failing HD you've got bigger problems than just
pacman's db =)