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

[Nagy Gabor]

2009. 09. 15, kedd keltezéssel 21.18-kor James Rayner ezt írta:
> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 9:14 PM, James Rayner <iphitus at iphitus.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:20 AM, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I don't really know what to think here. I had looked at that messages
> >> one for a long time and thought it was a decent idea, but never went
> >> far enough to take it and run with it.
> >>
> >> @Loui- sure, but this is for extraordinary messages- a lot more
> >> exclusive than ChangeLog-worthy stuff, and you have to explicitly
> >> request to see that anyway.
> >>
> >> @Jeff- it isn't exactly straightforward to view an install script
> >> beforehand, and the post_install business is a rather hacky reason for
> >> needing an install script.
> >>
> >> -Dan
> >>
> >
> > Dan's got the idea...
> >
> > pacman should not break someone's system without at least telling them
> > first. So yes - this is intended for more extraordinary messages.
> >
> > The current ways of informing the user (homepage/forum news and
> > post-install) are broken and non-simple:
> >  - both polling based
> oh, and post-install is after the fact - when the system is broken, so
> it's not a very good way of informing the user that their system "will
> break" because it's already broken.
> 
> Anyway, I'm all for a more generalised/ideal setup, but that's been
> wanted for a while with no patches coming forward.
> 

OK. Here is my staindpont (not closely related to iphitus's patch, but
some thoughts about the "problem"):

1. echo lines in install scriplets are stupid. I bet that you also
looked into install scriplets in /var/lib/pacman/... many times manually
to read that information on an installed package (when something went
wrong). I think this requires a new %INFO% field in (local) database,
which could be accessed by -Q. Drawback: pre_install, post_install,
pre_upgrade etc. is more sophisticated. (It is possible to only print
info if we upgrade version older than...)
2. I am not sure about the pre-transaction messages. We ask for user
confirmation before downloading packages, so in order to print
info/alarm etc. messages then, we _must_ store this info in sync
database, or interrupt the transaction once more before actual install.
post-transaction messages are easier to implement, see 1. Iphitus
chooses putting %ALERT% to syncdb.

Overall, I think iphitus's patch is a good compromise, if we want to
distinguish important and non-important messages.

My problem is that I don't see when the packager should remove %ALERT%
from package, in 1.0-2, 1.1-2, 2.0-1? When I've read (and understood)
the alert message, printing it again is just a spam.

Bye