Re: updateinfo and -S option

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004, Gustavo Niemeyer wrote:

> > If I remember correctly, the reason it was pulled of was because it
> > was ugly code and Gustavo had other ideas about implementing that, but
> > never got to it.
> >
> > Regarding the comment about how many people used it, well, we,
> > Conectiva, used it for our official updates, and it got dropped even
> > so :)
> 
> Just a small correction: it wasn't pulled off. Most of the code
> which was available in the old APT-RPM, done by Kojima, was
> ported to be included in the new versions (0.5 and up), so
> I haven't *removed* any code, I just haven't ported it over.
> 
> I haven't ported it because it was a hack. It was accessing
> the RPM header lists directly from the frontend, without any
> infrastructure support from APT itself. To include the same
> mechanism in Synaptic, for example, I'd have to copy the whole
> thing and use the same hack.

Guessed that much (hence my comment about implementing it differently)

> 
> The right way to do this is to include a new API to transit
> meta-information from the backend. And at that point you're
> right, I never got to it. My fault.

I've been intending to start using the updateinfo at work environment for
some time, just never gotten around to it and now we find out it doesn't
exist anymore :) So... unless you have immediate plans to implement it I
guess I could have a go at it in nearish future.

Hmm, while on the subject of new API's there's been an occasional wish on
synaptic-list at least to make it possible to access package changelogs
through libapt. The changelog info would bloat pkglists quite heavily
(although it probably compresses quite well) so .. perhaps a
--with-changelog option to genbasedir, and without that the changelog
would be available only for installed packages. Any objections to such an
addition?
	
	- Panu -