Re: ion3 packaging advice

On 2008-09-12, Paulo Matias <[email protected]> wrote:
> When building, the packaging script copies the release date to a
> script that runs when the user tries to install ion3. This install
> script is located here:
> http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ion-3/ion-3/ion-3.install

Per the license, it is ok if takes conscious user effort to disable
the post-install script, and the message is displayed prominently,
i.e. not hidden among long install logs in batch installs. (Perhaps
a 'read' would fix that, although annoying...) 

Other than that, I'd obviously prefer more intelligent notifications
that actually checked whether the package is really obsolete (which
should rarely become the case as Ion3 is "stable" now). Notifications
that haven't got anything of real importance to say, are like "crying 
the wolf", and people will start ignoring them. But the license does
not require smarter notifications.

(It is very simple to find out the latest version:

    curl -sI http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/dl/ion-3-latest.tar.gz | \
        sed 's!^Location:.*/ion-3-\(.*\).tar.gz!\1!p; d;'

Obviously, such "call home" is somewhat annoying.. although much
less than the application itself doing it at times other than the
installation.. and it would be better if the information was 
obtained from the same source as the package. Distributors could
keep a database of the information for all packages...)

-- 
Tuomo