I assume we are talking about a GUI software manager and not DNF.
Yes.
I also assume that we want to deliver a user friendly package manager that is a pleasure to work with.
On that assumption:
Scenario 1: Blocking. You do not want to restart an application any time you want to start doing another operation with it.
Scenario 2: Not sure. If, in that situation, the application showed a message that freshly installed packages must settle first and that it needs restarting the application, I would think this is not blocking. Without explanation, this feels like blocking.
If it said "sorry, an application restart is needed to perform this operation", then yes, I'd also consider it not blocking, because it would work according to the design goals. It's a poor UI, but not a bug. But that was not what I meant. I meant seeing a cryptic error, e.g. "database lookup returns null", or even our old friend "package not found". I.e. nothing that would explain to the general user what is wrong and what needs to be done.
Scenario 3: Blocking if interactions like these are possible.
Scenario 4: Blocking. Dtto.
Scenario 5: Not blocking - a common bug candidate. This is a little wrongly implemented Scenario 6.
Scenario 6: Not blocking - actually this feels like a fair behaviour to me, although that train has gone and now we expect a little more.
Yes, as I explained in my follow-up email, it is a fair behavior, exactly as you say.
Scenario 7: Blocking - clearly
If we just want to deliver a package manager that somehow "works" and do not bother about its user friendliness, then I switch Scenarios 3 and 4 to not blocking, but common bugs candidate.
Sigh, with conditional answers you're making my life even more difficult :-D
Given that we currently block on applications having nice icons [1], I hope that our standards for GUI apps functionality is not as low as to require the user to not even breathe when they click on a button. I might be wrong, though :-)
What is your preference? Works decently (3 and 4 blocking) or works barebones (3 and 4 not blocking)? (I'll just note that we're talking about Final criteria here. "Works barebones" is already available for Beta.)