[pacman-dev] [PATCH] Allow package to display a brief message before sync install

[Loui Chang]

On Mon 14 Sep 2009 17:26 +0200, Xavier wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 3:03 PM, James Rayner <iphitus at iphitus.org> wrote:
> > The aim of this is to alert a user to system/package breaking updates
> > before they happen and before they approve the sync install. This is
> > intended primarily for kernel/initscripts/pacman, etc updates when
> > things could go really wrong and need to be known beforehand. Example
> > output below.
> >
> > This adds an alert="" option to the PKGBUILD. This entry is then
> > stored in the package and then the db with repo-add. On a pacman sync
> > operation if any has an alert message it will be displayed before
> > "Proceed with installation"
> >
> > This is a really basic implementation that I'm sure could be brushed
> > up, as I've not used C for a while. However the pacman code is very
> > clean and easy to read, so that made it pretty trivial to add.
> >
> > There's an example repo with one package "alert" at
> > http://mess.iphitus.org/alert-test/
> >
> > The PKGBUILD for the aforementioned package:
> > http://mess.iphitus.org/alert-test/PKGBUILD
> >
> > Attached patch is against latest git.
> >
> > James
> >
> 
> We also had request of displaying messages at the end of a transaction :
> http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/12861
> 
> and request to move displaying of messages from scriptlets to pkgbuild :
> http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/1571
> 
> Should we think about a more general approach here ?

I think these messages should be in the ChangeLog, as any alerts or
release notes should be, and they shouldn't be printed during
installation unless the user specifically asks for it.