[pacman-dev] [PATCH RFC] DWIM if user attempts to sync on a file

[Andrew Gregory]

On 06/17/16 at 08:44am, Andrew wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 16, 2016, at 11:19 PM, Allan McRae wrote:
> > On 16/06/16 10:01, Andrew Eikum wrote:
> > > I get bit by this fairly often when I build AUR packages. From my
> > > perspective as a user, the distinction between -U and -S seems
> > > irrelevant: I just want to install this package. So let's just have
> > > pacman offer to Do What I Mean and install the files if I use -S when I
> > > should have used -U.
> > > 
> > > Signed-off-by: Andrew Eikum <coldpie at fastmail.com>
> > > 
> > > ---
> > > 
> > > RFC because this lacks tests and maybe UI polish, but I thought I'd see
> > > if there's interest in this change before I put more effort into it.
> > 
> > I am interested...  I have a more general comment.  Why do we
> > distinguish between -S and -U at all?
> > 
> > @Andrew: you are looking at unified transactions.  Do you think merging
> > -S and -U makes sense.
> 
> Speaking only as a simple end user, I don't see any distinction. Upgrade
> seems redundant. The Upgrade Options section of the manpage even says
> its options also apply to sync operations. The one distinction I can
> think of is whether the arguments are files, or package names from the
> repository. I guess if you had a local file named e.g. "qt" this
> distinction would be important; but I don't think that will occur in the
> real world.
> 
> So, another take on this patch would be to move local file and explicit
> URL handling into -S and make -U a synonym for -S, yes?
> 
> Andrew

I would love to rearrange pacman's UI and merge -S and -U into
a generic install operation.  I haven't worked on it in a while, but
I would like to see something like this:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/User:Apg#pacman_ui_reorganization

The problem with allowing -S to handle paths/urls is that package
package names are also valid paths.  Having pacman attempt to pick the
one that makes the most sense by default would be okay, but users need
to have some way to unambiguously distinguish between the two.
I don't think that just hoping that package names never overlap with
local files is enough.

For reference, you can see how pacinstall distinguishes the two here:
https://github.com/andrewgregory/pacutils/blob/master/doc/pactrans.pod

apg