[pacman-dev] Versioned packages

[Allan McRae]

On 10/09/16 08:41, Sergey Petrenko via pacman-dev wrote:
> Here is my attempt to solve seven years old infamous problem:
> https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/16702
> 
> Patch won't solve problem out of the box, a small changes in kernel PKGBUILD
> will be required, but only concerning install part.
> 
> Idea behind patch is pretty simple:
> 1) Configure list of packages and number of old versions pacman should try 
> to preserve.
> 2) When upgading to new version, keep old in place, if it has no file 
> conflicts with new one, and mark it as `archived`, remove oldest `archived` 
> version instead.
> 
> Most of time pacman treats `archived` packages as if they aren't installed.
> For now it won't check package conflicts and dependencies, only file conflicts 
> with newer versions. It's only an outline of full solution, proof of concept 
> to illustrate the idea.
> 
> I'd like to hear opinion of community whether this problem should be solved 
> at all, or is it more like a feature of ArchLinux, and if it should, whether
> such approach suits ArchLinux's philosophy.
> 

How is this better than having a package file sitting in the cache?

The "kernel problem" in Arch is not because it is not possible to have
multiple kernel packages available.  Other distributions provide endless
amounts of kernels (e.g. Manjaro).

I don't see anything that needs done on the package manager end for this.

Allan