On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 02:24:06AM -0200, Alexandre Oliva wrote: > On Jan 24, 2005, Axel Thimm <Axel.Thimm@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 03:05:29PM -0200, Alexandre Oliva wrote: > >> On Jan 24, 2005, Ralf Ertzinger <fedora-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> > The problem with this is that RPM does not indicate whether a package has > >> > "end user value" (a command line or GUI program, or a daemon), or is just > >> > a support library needed by said end user programs, which can be removed > >> > if not needed by anyone. > >> > >> Could we perhaps add such a flag to the rpm database? Then the > >> installer and the various other package installation front-ends could > >> mark user- (or comps-)requested packages as having end user value, and > >> everything else brought in to satisfy dependencies such that it is (or > >> can be) removed as soon as no dependencies remain. > > > ATrpms has started marking library only packages with > > > Provides: shared-library-package > > > so these packages can be identifies with > > > rpm --whatprovides shared-library-package > > > and be probed for garbage collection. > > The weak point of your argument is that it assumes that the only kind > of package that doesn't provide "end user value" is the kind that > provides shared-library-package. This is just not true, although I > must admit it's the most common case. Well, "anems are but sound and smoke". Originally I had "rtp" for runtimepackage, but this sounded like coming from the Windows side of the world. Since the current greatest pain are shared libs I decided to get more specific. I wouldn't mind an alternative suggestion. The important thing is that the mechanism works. > > I.e. there is no need to extend rpm, you have everything already in > > place. > > Not quite. Consider that I might actually want to keep a shared lib > around (say libdvdcss, only used as a plugin by libdvdread). With > your scheme, there's no way to tell it from any other shared > lib-providing package, so it could be garbage collected along with > other libs. Well, make the garbage collector have a config file with a filter with user configurable hold-backs. That isn't rocket science, is it? ;) -- Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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