Why write a new package manager anyway?

Posted Jan 20, 2014 10:29 UTC (Mon) by etienne (guest, #25256)
In reply to: Why write a new package manager anyway? by mathstuf
Parent article: DNF and Yum in Fedora

>> when a package is uninstalled, magically decide
> Do you have an example of this? It doesn't seem obvious to me.

If the user uninstall a package because he does not need it, then the dependent libraries shall be kept (it is better to use up-to-date software), but if a user uninstall a package because there is a regression - then the package manager shall guess if the regression is in the package itself or in one of the dependant libraries pulled by the main package, that is the automagic part.

Why write a new package manager anyway?

Posted Jan 20, 2014 12:42 UTC (Mon) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (3 responses)

Making that work halfway reliably sounds halting-complete.

Why write a new package manager anyway?

Posted Jan 20, 2014 18:50 UTC (Mon) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] (2 responses)

Worse. In the halting problem you know what behaviour to look for; here you haven't got the faintest clue (Is it slower? Now crashes with <random file>? The screen shows strange colors?).

Why write a new package manager anyway?

Posted Jan 20, 2014 23:50 UTC (Mon) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Maybe different subcommands "remove" and "revert" could help here? This really actually sounds like "yum history undo" to me… Good luck making a good UI for it and explaining to the user what is happening and the difference :D .

Why write a new package manager anyway?

Posted Jan 21, 2014 17:45 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Quite. This is a telepathy-complete problem. (In some cases I suspect it may be precognition-complete.)