[pacman-dev] Downgradability...sort of....

[Dan McGee]

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Xavier <shiningxc at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 5:52 PM, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 2:36 AM, Jatheendra <jatheendra at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>> Im trying to add some downgradability magic into pacman .Being quite
>>> new to pacman code, i need your help  to identify the possible
>>> pitfalls of my approach before trying something.
>>>
>>> What i plan to do is..
>>>
>>> In libalpm/remove.c  unlink_file()  [ I guess remove.c is the only
>>> place where we are removing files ]
>>>
>>> replace all unlink(), rename() etc with  copyandunlink , copyandrename
>>> etc which will copy the file first into an archive file
>>> package-backup.tgs in cache,then do unlink or rename. Then finally
>>> include  all the necessary .INSTALL ,PKGINFO ,.CHANGELOG etc and clean
>>> up.
>>>
>>> So even if i do a -Scc i will have a backup of what was installed on
>>> my system and can roll back to the previous state.
>>
>> I, for one, like this idea. Not that I'd personally use it too often,
>> but the concept seems useful. It gives us coverage for all the "give
>> us a backup kernel!" ideas.
>
> For this coverage, it seems fine (maybe even better?) to have it
> manually triggered rather than automatically done for every single
> packages.
>
> Then it is the same as bacman external script :
>> bacman -h
> This program recreates a package using pacman's db and system files
> Usage:   bacman <installed package name>
> Example: bacman kernel26
>
> instead that we are trying to make it more complex by integrating it
> into pacman directly.
>
> And again, if it is automatically done for every single packages, then
> what is the difference with never running -Scc?

I 100% agree with Xavier here. This seems to be an overcomplex
solution to a problem that I'm not sure really exists. If people
really want backups, either use -Sc instead of -Scc, have another
package backup directory that you copy these essential packages into,
or use the existing bacman script. pacman is a package manager, not a
system recovery tool.

-Dan