[Mageia-dev] Orphans - those poor orphans . . .

[LinuxBSDos.com]

> 2012/1/6 Guillaume Rousse <guillomovitch at gmail.com>:
>> Le 06/01/2012 16:13, Wolfgang Bornath a écrit :
>>
>>> Ah, I see your reasoning, of course, if the packager forgot to name
>>> the requires then urpmi declares them as orphans. But then, to be
>>> safe, you have to forget about auto-orphans altogether because you can
>>> not be sure that all packagers did their homework.
>>
>> Then you have to forget about using packages because you're not sure
>> packagers did their work correctly.
>
> I'd argue like that as well if we were in court. But it's not the
> same: if a packager misses something and the installation does not
> work, so what? I can use another package or distribution. But if he
> causes urpmi to regard a needed package as orphan and lets me remove
> it the system can break, now that is a problem.
>
>> So far, still no one proved than 'orphan' status was wrong regarding
>> urpmi
>> definition of what is an orphan package, rather than regarding their own
>> personal expectation.
>
> Yes, because the user does not care about any such definitions when he
> reads on the console or in rpmdrake "These packages are orphans now,
> you can safely remove them". I'd suggest to change this sentence ASAP
> into "If you are sure that it will not break anything you can remove
> them now". This would be a better advice for the user than "you can
> safely remove".
>

True that the user does not and should not care about definitions of an
orphan, but also, the user should not be put in a situation where he/she
will have to go hunting for what could or could not break anything.

--
finid