Re: [Synaptic-devel] apt-get compatibility, filters, suggestions

[Michael Vogt]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 05:17:41AM +0100, Oliver Lange wrote:
> Hello everyone !

Hi Oliver,

thanks for your feedback!
 
> 1) custom package sources
> 
> It seems that synaptic can't handle some custom entries in 
> /etc/apt/sources.list,
> where apt-get has no problems with. This affects unusual entries, like:
> 
>    deb http://dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/jedit/ ./
> 
> ... used for Jedit (java text editor). This is just one of several examples.
> 
> The problem is: if i once fetched these lists using apt-get, Synaptic will
> never report any error, even if it always fails to fetch the package list
> from such sources. It would be nice if synaptic wouldn't auto-close the
> package lists fetch window if synaptic failed to download one or more lists.

This looks like a bug. I tried to reproduce it by adding the above
line but I wasn't able to reproduce it (jedit shows up in my "New in
repostory" view just fine). Can you please tell me what steps I have
to take to reproduce the problem? 

> 2) auto-purge dependents
> 
> When uninstalling (purging) a package which is required by other packages,
> Synaptic pops up a requester for uninstalling these other packages, too,
> but it doesn't offer a checkbox for purging them, so all these packages
> must be purged manually..

Good point! I filed this as enhancement bug #6811 in the ubuntu
bugzilla.

> 3) more filters
> 
> I'd like to add more custom filter rules, especially for listing
> packages by priority.  This allows checking for 'required' or
> 'important' packages, for example.

Do you think a column that can be sorted is usefull? Or rather a
filter? 

> 4) orphans & debfoster
> 
> Orphans: the 'orphaned' filter doesn't work with all kinds of packages. May i 
> ask
> if it's planned to add 'debfoster' functionality ? This would be a great 
> addition
> (i'm missing this feature because i'm used to have gentoo-linux doing these
> cleanup things perfectly).

There are plans to add a more intelligent dependency handling into
synaptic that monitors what dependencies where installed
"automatically" as part of another package and which where not. If a
package is removed all automatic dependencies will be removed
too. This is how aptitude solves this problem.

Cheers,
 Michael
-- 
Linux is not The Answer. Yes is the answer. Linux is The Question. - Neo