[arch-general] In reply to [arch-dev-public] [signoff] pacman 4.0.0-2

[Karol Blazewicz]

I don't have the permissions to post to [arch-dev-public] so I'm
posting it here.


On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
> The most anticipated release EVER has landed in [testing]. Do I expect
> it to make it out before we need a 4.0.1? Not really. :)
>
> Questions? Concerns? Comments? I'm telling you as little as possible
> about this release and how to make things work to put more people in
> the "standard user who doesn't follow development like a hawk" shoes.
>
> -Dan

A question about the manpage and '-xx' switches e.g.:
      -u, --sysupgrade
<snip>
          Pass this option twice to enable package downgrade; in this
case pacman will select
          sync packages whose version does not match with the local
version. This can be
          useful when the user switches from a testing repo to a stable one.
<snip>

People often overlook it - especially for '-dd'. Compare this with
'pacman -Sh' output:
<snip>
 -u, --sysupgrade     upgrade installed packages (-uu allows downgrade)
<snip>
'-uu' is explicitly mentioned.

Do you think pacman manpage should be made more scannable (i.e. you
can just glance over and know what to do) / searchable - the '-uu'
switch is not exp[licitly mentioned anywhere, you can't grep it.

On the other hand 'pacman -Sh' doesn't tell you about '-yy':
 -y, --refresh        download fresh package databases from the server


What do you think about such changes? Do you want them at all and if
yes, will you write them or do you prefer I come up with a proposal /
patch?

-Karol