[pacman-dev] bogus reinstalling message

[Nagy Gabor]

> On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 2:56 PM, Nagy Gabor <ngaba at bibl.u-szeged.hu>
> wrote:
> >
> 
> First, thanks for the feedback!
> 
> > 0. I don't like this _alpm_pkg_compare_versions() function at all,
> > it has some annoying warning messages (why is the "forcing
> > upgrade..." message important?), these reduce its usability
> > (hardwired "upgrade" word etc.). This function is just a vercmp +
> > force check + printing some (useless?) warnings. (The second
> > "downgrade" warning also seems a bit odd in "-S target" operation
> > because of mentioning the repo.)
> 
> I agree that these warning messages are annoying and rather useless.
> 
> However, I like the idea of having a simple wrapper to vercmp handling
> the force flag (and maybe the epoch idea in 10 years :P)

Btw, in your patch (without downgrade messages) we shouldn't check
force in sync_addtarget, because force cannot affect "vercmp != 0"
result. (I assume that --needed filters out reinstalls only). So
pkg_vercmp (or strcmp;-) is enough here imho (without upgrade/downgrade
distinction).

> Finally, why is it odd to mention the repo?

OK. This is not odd, just strange. Clearly, this was designed for -Su.
No other -S messages uses this "from repo extra" phrasing.
 
> > 1. After your patch we won't display warning in 2) case neither
> > (as you wrote in patch description). I am not sure this is better. I
> > would simply inform user about both downgrade (but not in
> > pkg_compare_versions!) and reinstall instead.
> 
> Could you be much more precise here?
> 
> There are 3 different values returned by compare_versions, and 2
> values for the needed flag, which makes 6 different combination.
> 
> downgrade only applies when compare_versions == -1 and with both
> values of needed (because of point 2. below)
> 
> reinstall happens when compare_versions == 0 and needed == 0
> 
> So you want to display these messages only in these cases? And nothing
> in the other cases? (like skipping when compare_versions == 0 and
> needed == 1)

I am talking about "-S target" not about -Su (sync_newversion).
1. Target is newer:
usual case, no warning
2. Reinstall was requested (local_ver == target_ver):
Skipping/Reinstalling foo... (1.0-1 => 1.0-1)
3. Target is older:
Downgrading foo... (2.0-1 => 1.0-1)

[These => notations can be confusing with force flagged packages.]

I am a bit unsure about downgrade warning idea (after thinking a bit).
(However, atm if pkg_compare_versions is used, we get a downgrade
warning.) It would be cool (imho), but in fact we use downgrade/upgrade
distinction nowhere else. (see -U, resolvedeps added packages (edge),
many event/debug messages and so on.)

Bye