[pacman-dev] -Qu vs -Su

[Aaron Griffin]

On 9/29/07, Roman Kyrylych <roman.kyrylych at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/9/28, Xavier <shiningxc at gmail.com>:
> > Since the discussion on http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/7884 is confusing me,
> > I thought I would bring it here.
> >
> > The issue reported by Dan is the following :
> > The -Qu output is different than -Su one, because -Su resolves dependencies,
> > while -Qu does not.
> > My first question : is that really an issue?
> >
> > The description of -Qu says :
> >   -u, --upgrades       list all packages that can be upgraded
> >
> > IMO, a new dependency does not belong to the list of packages that can be
> > upgraded. So it isn't necessarily a bug if it shows up in -Su, but not in
> > -Qu.
> >
> >
> > Also, note that -Qu can't match exactly -Su, because -Su is interactive :
> > Replace %s with %s/%s? [Y/n]
> > %s conflicts with %s. Remove %s? [Y/n]
> >
> > But if you answer no to the conflicts question, pacman just fails and stops
> > there. So not very interesting.
> > And the replace question is generally answered by yes.
> > So answering yes to both questions should give a good picture of what will
> > happen.
> >
>
> I also quote Aaron's comment from Flyspray:
> > I want one function that says "give me a list of packages that are upgradable". This function can be used in -Qu (simply returning the list and printing), -Su (using the list as targets), and -Sup (returning the list and calling some public alpm_pkg_get_url() on each member).
> >
> > A public accessor to get a URL for a package can make -Qu and -Sup almost the same, except with different output functions.
>
>
> I uderstand "a list of packages that are upgradeable" as a list of
> _already_installed_ packages that have newer versions available or
> there are new packages that replace them.
> This is different from the list that -Su and -Sup gives, because they
> list packages that are _going_to_be_installed_, including new
> dependencies.
> And this is also different from -Qu.
> The description of -Qu says "list all packages that can be upgraded"
> But -Qu doesn't do this! It displays _new_versions_(and replacements)_
> of currently installed packages. This is different.

Yeah yeah - -Su would do one extra step in this case. It would take
the list of packages and resolve the dependencies as well.

We could, of course, do that as part of the "upgradable" check - I
could see it either way.

But, I guess, my point is this. The logic COULD be the same, and it
would make much more sense to get a list of packages without the need
for this clunky "transaction object", applying the transaction around
the INSTALL only.