[pacman-dev] [PATCH] New sync070.py pactest

[Xavier]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 5:38 PM, Nagy Gabor<ngaba at bibl.u-szeged.hu> wrote:
>> > This pactest currently fails. It shows that the current "sync
>> > addtarget" is quite messy. Most of the work (search for provision,
>> > install group) is done in the front-end, some of the work done in the
>> > back-end (interpret '/', avoid duplicated targets, and the
>> > "conversion" from pmpkg_t to pmsyncpkg_t). The only information
>> > back-end can pass to front-end is the package name, which is not
>> > enough (that's why the pactest fails). As a possible fix, we could
>> > patch front-end to give more concrete info to backend (to
>> > sync_addtarget) by using 'db/package' format. But I think that
>> > still would be ugly, the back-end should be able to say, that he wants
>> > to add _this_ (pmpkg_t*) target (API change). IMHO most of the -S
>> > provision/group work should be done by back-end, thus we could hide
>> > some public functions (whatprovides, etc.). Unfortunately an other
>> > problem pops up here: the hackish communication between back-end and
>> > user ("Select packages to install from foo group...").
>> >
>> > Conlusion? I don't know. Clearly, the "add provision" and "add group"
>> > analogous to "add literal", that's why these codeparts should be in
>> > back-end. But user<->back-end communication is not perfect atm...
>> >
>>
>> This issue is related to FS#15141 : http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/15141
>> Nagy, this pactest has never been added, and it's not in your git repo either?
>> We definitely need some work in this area, so I am curious to know if
>> you've already tried something.
>
> That pactest should pass now, because the provision handling was moved
> to back-end (commit fd8969f). I haven't done more work in this area
> (apart from fd8969f). Btw, that pactest has not been added and it is not
> in my git repo, indeed.
>
> Unfortunately, the current implementation is still ugly (or uglier?), we
> have problems with group handling, see
> http://www.archlinux.org/pipermail/pacman-dev/2009-June/008847.html, and
> imho we have no clear conception here. Now I am not even sure that it
> was a good idea to handle provision in the back-end without any option
> to disable it. I think that all these stuffs should be handled in the
> back-end with a possibility to enable/disable these from the front-end
> (trans_addtarget flags or sync_addtarget_{provision,group}?). Now I
> prefer this alternative over the other "nice" one (that is, everything
> is "computed" by front-end and it adds the *pmpkg_t), because this is
> more "front-end developer"-friendly.
>
> I also think we need more work here, but to be honest, I am not very
> motivated. (FS#15141 can be implemented without this deep rework, but
> probably that would be hackish.)
>
> I have no clear opinion about '/': sometimes we interpret it in the
> front-end (-Si), sometimes in the back-end (-S) [sync_addtarget]. Wow.
> For my taste, sync_addtarget should not deal with '/', a dbs param
> (alpm_list of *pmdb_t) would be definitely "nicer" (and a bit more
> complicated: front-end should build a one-element alpm_list in repo/
> case), thus we would move all '/' interpretation to the front-end.
> However, we cannot do this (nicely), because we have one trans_addtarget
> function, and this new param cannot be interpreted with -U/-R...
>

If we handle everything (literal, provision, group) in the backend,
then it does not need to be configurable, does it?
And maybe the repo/ syntax should be only a frontend thing.

then the backend could offer these two options:
addtarget(target) : look in all dbs
addtarget(db,target) : look only in db

and this would search for literal, then provision, then group (in that order).