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Re: Two new "categories" created. Comment needed


On Wed, 7 Apr 2004, Harold L Hunt II wrote:

> Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 7 Apr 2004, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> >
> >>Harold Hunt has just, without any discussion here, created two new
> >>categories.  One is understandable and probably doesn't require
> >>discussion.
> >>
> >>He's changed XFree86 to X11.  Oddly enough, XFree86 isn't currently
> >>listed as a category in setup.html so I've added X11 to the list
> >>of supported packages.
> >
> > I think this is a good idea, as long as every package that uses X is in
> > that category.  This includes, IMO, things like "grace", "emacs", "xfig",
> > etc.  I'd also put "ghostscript-x11" there if it isn't already.
>
> Already done:
>
> find -name "*.hint" | xargs sed -i -e "s/^\(category:.*\)XFree86\(.*\)/\1X11\2/"
>
> Note to all X package maintainers: modify your setup.hint source files
> and change catgory "XFree86" to "X11" so that you don't accidentally
> revert this change on your next upload.

Umm, I meant the above as a reminder that if a package uses X, it should
be in that category.  Your method only moved all packages that *already*
were in "XFree86" to "X11"...  It may be that this covers all the packages
that use X, however.

> >>The other, more controversial addition is ZZZRemovedPackages.
> >>
> >>Harold has moved older XFree86 stuff into this directory.
> >>
> >>Does anyone have a problem with this new category?  I think it's
> >>obvious what it is used for.  The question is does it serve a
> >>useful purpose?  Is the name sufficiently clear?  Does it
> >>cause any side effects that may not be immediately obvious?
> >>
> >>If it is decided that this is a good thing then it needs to
> >>be documented.
> >>
> >>cgf
> >
> > I believe it's a good idea to have something like it.  A few comments,
> > though...  First, I don't like the "ZZZ" prefix -- we can probably use
> > some non-alphanumeric character that succeeds 'z' in the collation order,
> > e.g., "_".
>
> I don't care what it is as long as it shows up at the bottom of the
> category list.
>
> We can change it easily enough at any time with a simple script, since I
> have put all such packages in a single top-level directory:
> release/ZZZRemovedPackages.
>
> Of course, it would make sense to rename the directory if we rename the
> category...
>
> > Second, it should be made clear in the documentation that no
> > new package should have that category, unless it's an upgrade helper
> > package.
>
> Heh heh... you'd think package creators would figure that out, but best
> not to leave it unsaid.
>
> > And third, it would be useful if the removed packages kept their
> > original categories, with this one prepended to the list (so that it would
> > always be seen in the "Categories" column in all of the views).
>
> I *strongly* disagree.  The main reason I created this category was that
> people couldn't see the short description of a removed package or were
> not reading it (partly due to setup.exe not being resizeable), so they
> were trying to install removed packages and complaining that they didn't
> gain anything from installing that package.
>
> I don't want these packages showing up in their original categories
> because they are just clutter.
>
> If you have a very strong reason for why this is necessary, lets here it.

Okay, here it is: it's a "principle of least surprise" thing.  Suppose you
upgraded "libfoo" from the "Foo" category a week ago, and now you want to
upgrade again.  And suppose in that time, someone took "libfoo" and
replaced it by "libboffo".  So, you go into setup, look in the "Foo"
category, expecting to find "libfoo", which, of course, isn't there.  You
don't know what "libboffo" is, and that it replaces "libfoo" (you could
guess, based on sdesc, although you can't explicitly say "replaces libfoo"
there, for the obvious reasons).  What you'd really expect to see is
"libfoo", which is now described as "replaced by libboffo".

FWIW, it would be a trivial patch to the chooser code to, for example,
grey out packages in the "_RemovedPackages" category (once we settle on
the name).

Another thing I was thinking of was the "if it's removed, why is it
selected" attitude.  That, however, needs something more than just keeping
the other categories around...

> > Not as important, but we can also shorten it to "_Removed" or something.
>
> Well, I debated shortness vs. being absolutely clear with the name.  I
> don't see a reason to not have "Packages" on the end, as it fits just
> fine in all displays that I've seen it on so far.
>
> Harold

Fair enough.  I'm ok either way.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
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ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"I have since come to realize that being between your mentor and his route
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