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

[Jeff Horelick]

2009/9/14 Loui Chang <louipc.ist at gmail.com>

> 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.
>
>
>
Also, these messages could be echo "message here" lines in the
post_install/post_upgrade functions of the package.install file. Yes it
prints after install, but like it being in the ChangeLog as Loui suggested,
the user can always open up the .install file and see it before they do the
upgrade and the ChangeLog doesn't print anything anywhere....