alad at mailbox.org

[Mikael Blomstrand]

tors 8 mars 2018 kl. 13:39 skrev Eli Schwartz <eschwartz at archlinux.org>:

> On 03/08/2018 12:24 AM, Mikael Blomstrand
> > When searching by name, i think the rpc should
> > at least also search by the "replaces" attribute too. Provides would be a
> > separate query but it could also be the same.
>
> That would have very little utility, as a package which replaces another
> package cannot satisfy a build dependency on it, whereas a provides is
> literally meant to ensure that that package is considered to be the same
> as the package it provides.


I missed this before replying before since the thread switched name again.

OK, maybe I've misunderstood the purpose of replaces when reading the man
page. It's been my impression that if package A replaces B, then A must be
the "new" B, and everyone using B should switch to A. I just assumed that
this also means A should be able to be used in place of B.

I had an idea that it would be nice to have merged packages "replaced" by
the new base.

This might be completely stupid, but it was my thought.

It is semantically wrong, as that is simply not what a "replaces"
> keyword even means...


Would you mind explaining what it means or what correct use would be if
I've misunderstood the man pages? :)

Its only conceivable use would be to enable AUR packages to
> automatically sync and replace existing packages, which would simply be
> incorrect.


Yes, having packages in AUR arbitrarily replace packages is obviously a bad
idea. It's not really what I had in mind either. My thought was more that a
AUR helper that is smart enough could see that an installed package has
been removed from the AUR, and if there is a package in the AUR replacing
that package, then it could ask the user if they want to look at the
PKGBUILD for that instead.

This is relevant if a user installs package foo-bar which provides foo.
When searching for "foo-bar", "foo" won't show up, because it doesn't
provide "foo-bar". It could however replace "foo-bar".

Is this still unsound?

Regards,
Mikael