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

[Wolfgang Bornath]

2012/1/7 andre999 <andre999mga at laposte.net>:
> Sander Lepik a écrit :
>>
>> 07.01.2012 01:09, Johnny A. Solbu kirjutas:
>>>
>>> On Friday 06 January 2012 18:54, Balcaen John wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I guess when you did encounter that you just remove task-kde from your
>>>> system
>>>
>>> I did not. I should have been more clearly with my example. :-)=
>>> The packages in my example where all console program, that I installed
>>> and removed using urpm[ie]. So I explicitly removed only the one program I
>>> just installed. And it did not install any other packages, as a result of
>>> dependencies.
>>>
>>> And this is my point. We uninstall a specific program, not a meta/task
>>> package, which result in some packages beeing marked as orphaned, when they
>>> are infact Not orphaned.
>>
>> Give us command line example. Install something and remove it and then
>> show me what got orphaned if it wasn't orphan before. What you claim here
>> doesn't sound right as i haven't seen it myself.
>>
>> --
>> Sander
>
>
> It is not exactly the same thing, but in more than one occasion when I
> installed packages with similar functions at the same time, to compare them,
> say A, B, and C, and later uninstalled B and C, I have found A to be
> declared an orphan.  Only to find that it had been required by one of the
> others.
> (I often prefer command-line packages.  It is simple to add them to the menu
> if I want.  And I have often enough made such comparisons.  To be fair, I
> haven't done much of that since installing Mageia, when it first became
> available.)
>
> Really though, we should consider how people work with installing software.
>
> The auto-orphans option and how it currently works is based on the
> assumption that if package A is installed as a requirement of package B,
> that on uninstalling B, one will want to uninstall A.  That to me is a false
> premise.
> It is likely to be the case, but not necessarily.
> Generally users will use the graphic installer (rpmdrake), as it is more
> convenient.  When the question of orphans is presented, if it is presented,
> one should be presented with the same options that are presented on
> installation with required packages.  That is, to be able to query the
> description ("more info") of the associated packages, and thus readily make
> an informed decision of what to remove.

This is ok if you have 2 or 3 orphans. But it is unpractical if more
packages are declared as orphans. As I wrote earlier, when he is
presented with a list of 20 or even 100 "orphans" the user will
definitely not sit down and check each package for "more info".

-- 
wobo