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From: Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org>
To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] What are blocks used for?
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:24:14 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20080416072413.GA23808@comet> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20080416062452.45f3831d@snowcone>

On 06:24 Wed 16 Apr     , Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> What all are blocks used for?
> 
> a) Marking that two unrelated packages are mutually incompatible at
> runtime because they happen to collide, for example on a commonly named
> executable.
> 
> b) Marking that two related implementations are mutually incompatible at
> runtime because they both provide the same binary.
> 
> c) Marking that a file that used to be provided by one package is now
> provided by another package that is either depending upon or depended
> upon by the original package.
> 
> d) Marking that a package has been moved into another package.
> 
> Are there any other uses?

A slight tweak that you may have already considered: a single package is 
split into multiple packages with a metabuild (named the same as the 
original single package) in a newer version -- for example, modularized 
X.

> For future EAPIs, being able to tell the package manager that your
> block is of one of the types above will help the package manager smooth
> out the upgrade path for users. For example, for class d) blocks such
> as the recent coreutils / mktemp mess, the package manager can suggest
> to the user to install the new package and then uninstall the old
> package, rather than forcing the user to uninstall the old package by
> hand (possibly leaving their system without critical utilities) and then
> install the new package.
> 
> I strongly suspect that in many (but not all) cases the package manager
> could be making users' lives a lot easier than it currently is...

Sounds like a great idea.

Thanks,
Donnie
-- 
gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list



  parent reply	other threads:[~2008-04-16  7:24 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 42+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2008-04-16  5:24 [gentoo-dev] What are blocks used for? Ciaran McCreesh
2008-04-16  5:54 ` "Mateusz A. Mierzwin'ski"
2008-04-16  6:34   ` Ciaran McCreesh
2008-04-16  6:06     ` Luis Francisco Araujo
2008-04-16  7:26     ` Michael Haubenwallner
2008-04-16  7:34       ` Branko Badrljica
2008-04-16 14:56   ` Richard Freeman
2008-04-16 17:05     ` "Mateusz A. Mierzwin'ski"
2008-04-16 18:41       ` Petteri Räty
2008-04-16  7:24 ` Donnie Berkholz [this message]
2008-04-16  7:52   ` "Mateusz A. Mierzwin'ski"
2008-04-16  7:46     ` Ciaran McCreesh
2008-04-16 11:56     ` [gentoo-dev] " Duncan
2008-04-16  7:56   ` [gentoo-dev] " "Mateusz A. Mierzwiński"
2008-04-16  7:55     ` Bo Ørsted Andresen
2008-04-16  8:15       ` "Mateusz A. Mierzwiński"
2008-04-16  8:21         ` Bo Ørsted Andresen
2008-04-16 14:53           ` Richard Freeman
2008-04-16 17:01             ` "Mateusz A. Mierzwiński"
2008-04-16  8:04     ` Ciaran McCreesh
2008-04-16  8:18       ` "Mateusz A. Mierzwiński"
2008-04-16  8:13         ` Markus Rothe
2008-04-16  9:07           ` "Mateusz A. Mierzwiński"
2008-04-16  9:03             ` Ciaran McCreesh
2008-04-16  9:11               ` Wulf C. Krueger
2008-04-17 16:40             ` Dawid Węgliński
2008-04-16 12:04         ` [gentoo-dev] " Duncan
2008-04-16 12:29           ` "Mateusz A. Mierzwiński"
2008-04-16 12:30             ` Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
2008-04-16 16:59               ` "Mateusz A. Mierzwiński"
2008-04-16 21:24                 ` Andrej Kacian
2008-04-16  8:40       ` [gentoo-dev] " Ulrich Mueller
2008-04-16  8:48         ` Ciaran McCreesh
2008-04-17 20:02         ` Enrico Weigelt
2008-04-17 19:31   ` Enrico Weigelt
2008-04-16 10:16 ` Bernd Steinhauser
2008-04-17 19:51   ` Enrico Weigelt
2008-04-17 20:15     ` Vlastimil Babka
2008-04-18  1:11     ` [gentoo-dev] " Duncan
2008-04-17 17:58 ` [gentoo-dev] " Enrico Weigelt
2008-04-17 19:08   ` Vlastimil Babka
2008-04-17 20:07   ` Vlastimil Babka

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