[Piuparts-devel] Bug#825487: Bug#825487: Patch

[Sean Whitton]

Hello Holger,

On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 10:30:34AM +0000, Holger Levsen wrote:
> it would have been easier to me (and thus probably resulted in a sooner
> reply…) if you had presented those questions again, instead of making us
> wade through half answered stuff…
> 
> Huhmf :/ While I could see parts of questions unanswered by me, I do think Andreas
> answered these bits. Could you maybe please just rebase your patch based on that
> feedback and then we comment again? Or, simple isolate the questions and
> repeat them?

Since the questions I asked were quite fundamental to the patch, I'd
prefer to ask some feedback on them before I dive into the code again.

1. --allow-downgrades seems to be necessary when using the `apt-get
install ./foo.deb` invocation, if foo.deb is already installed with the
same version.  Otherwise, the re-install fails.  That breaks piuparts'
standard reinstall test.  (As you say, it is not required with `apt-get
install foo` -- not sure if that is deliberate.)

I'll verify that apt has not changed its behaviour since the time I
prepared my first patch, but if the --allow-downgrades is still
required, do you still object to it?  If so, this bug is wontfix.

2. Andreas said that dropping the call to list_installed_files "breaks
some options that are not frequently used".  What could those options
be?  I thought that list_installed_files should be called once for each
command that is run.  So when I removed the `dpkg -i` call, I removed
the call to list_installed_files.  Why is that wrong?

(of course, I am going to add a check for the version of apt, and if
it's old I'll call `dpkg -i` and list_installed_files, but I'm talking
about the case where apt is new enough and I'm calling `apt-get install
./foo.deb`).

Thanks!

-- 
Sean Whitton