Software Management call for RFEs

[Mike Pinkerton]

On 23 May 2013, at 01:27, Björn Persson wrote:

> Adam Williamson wrote:
>> On Thu, 2013-05-23 at 02:20 +0300, Oron Peled wrote:
>>> Thinking about it, the terminology adopted by "comps" is clearer
>>> and provides a generalization of this -- if someone select something
>>> they get:
>>>  - Mandatory packages (cannot be deselected)
>>>  - Default packages (selected, but the user may deselect)
>>>  - Optional packages (deselected, but the user may select)
>>>
>>>
>>> Borrowing similar logic for rpm we could have in the spec file:
>>>   Name: acme
>>>   Requires: foo, foo-utils
>>>   InstallDefault: bar, perl-bar, python-bar
>>>   InstallOptional: baz, baz-ldap
>>>
>>> Now it would be classic to use "--with/--without" as command line  
>>> flags,
>>> but it's already taken :-(
>>
>> I'm pretty sure that's precisely the distinction expressed by  
>> Suggests
>> and Recommends, FWIW.
>
> For interactive operations that's how I envision it, yes. When yum
> lists the packages it's going to install and asks for confirmation, it
> would list recommended packages and their requirements under
> "Installing because of recommendations", and suggested packages under
> "Suggested packages not being installed". The user can then choose to
> abort the operation and run the command again, adding some suggested
> packages to the command line or using --exclude on some of the
> recommended ones.


Because this is an interactive operation, rather than aborting, why  
not change "(y/N)" to "(y/N/m)".  If the user chooses "m" for modify,  
then yum could ask whether the user wanted to delete a recommended  
package and, if response is "y", show the recommended packages one  
line at a time for a "y" or "n" response.  Then yum could ask whether  
the user wanted to add a suggested package and, if response is "y",  
show the suggested packages one line at a time for a "y" or "n"  
response.  Dealing with the modifications interactively would be less  
annoying than aborting and typing a new yum command full of -- 
excludes or additional package names.

-- 
Mike