[pacman-dev] Suggestion: Move local db to a different location

[Travis Willard]

Here's a quick suggestion - far too many times I've seen people blow away
their entire /var/lib/pacman/ folder in hopes of getting rid some error
message or another, only to realize that pacman ALSO stores its
locally-installed info there too and that they're now, essentially, screwed as
far as pacman is concerned.  Can we put this local info in a different place,
or at least separate it from the remote db info a little more clearly?  

Like, for example, instead of the current set up of

/var/lib/pacman/local
/var/lib/pacman/current
/var/lib/pacman/extra
etc...

we have

/var/lib/pacman/local/
/var/lib/pacman/remote/current
/var/lib/pacman/remote/extra
etc...

This structure, to me, makes more sense, since the "local" repo is a totally
different beast from the remote repo info.  This also allows the creation of a
sync-able 'local' repo, like

[local]
http://localhost:8080/path/to/local/repo

in pacman.conf without conflicting names.

If nobody has any objections, I suppose I could hack a patch into the files
backend that would do this, and possibly move from the current structure to
the new one if it detects the old structure.

In addition, those adventurous souls who like rm -r can be told to just rm -r
/var/lib/pacman/remote and that will get rid of all remote repo information,
which can be freshly obtained with pacman -Sy.  I'm not trying to make it
idiot-proof, but a clearer boundary between the local info, which should never
be touched at the command line unless you really know what you're doing, and
the remote stuff, that you can screw over until the cows come home and, in the
end, just run pacman -Sy to get it all back.

--
Travis