[Aptitude-devel] Bug#576319: Bug#576319: aptitude: "Cancel pending actions" erase "h - hold" state

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

2015-09-26 3:16 GMT+01:00 Osamu Aoki <osamu at debian.org>:
>
> When I was living under the sid system, aptitude started with mass
> package removal when some library dependence of Gnome packages were not
> optimal when it is started with "aptitude -u" option" or when you hit
> "u" to update the package list.  This update action not only downloads
> the package list but also update selected packages and suggests package
> version updates and removals.
>
> Maybe problem has been tamed by now and you may not be seeing it.
>
> What was needed was a way to get back to the state just after the
> package list download but with no auto selected update and removal
> choices.

Hmm, it looks like you have/had enabled the option "Automatically
upgrade installed packages".  I am not sure if Undo also works in this
case, maybe not.


> Alex's proposal of having 2 internal commands is good one.
> keep  -- reset all install/purge/delete/reinstall scheduled actions
> reset -- reset all install/purge/delete/reinstall scheduled action plus hold
>
> And let "Cancel pending actions" use the "keep" and update documentation
> on it.
>
> As for unhold-all, let's make people use existing UI to do that.

This doesn't work well.  There are loads of people who are completely
unaware that aptitude has a TUI to begin with, when for me it is
clearly the most strinking feature.  And this was not in random
encounters with users, but in the last DebConf, with seasoned Debian
developers very integrated in the community and active for many years.

And in general, keeping functionality and behaviour consistent between
different ways of using aptitude is a continous request, there are
lots of bugs reporting differences and asking to correct them.

So I am not sure how to better address this yet (maybe unhold-all is
not needed, or maybe adding reset is a good idea in general), but
keeping and improving consistency in all ways of using aptitude has to
be a design goal when making changes.


> How about on TUI, instead of inconsistent behavior:
> * press ":" once on the same thing should not reset a "hold". (keep)
> * press ":" twice on the same thing should reset a "hold".    (reset)
>
> Shift-: is not ; on German, French, and Japanese keyboard :-) But this
> double press approach is common for all.

To be honest, I think that this proposal would also be confusing for
many people.  It is changing the current behaviour that many people
are used to after years of muscle-memory (":" already resets holds as
well, individually and in subtrees, I use it routinely and on
purpose), and people old or new might think that this functionality
suddenly starts to bechave erratically and that is not working
properly.

This could translate to more bug reports, a prospect that terrifies me
in general :-), but specially leaving the situation unresolved and
still adding to the problem.


... So in summary yes, I think that there is a problem in what you
originally described, but so far I am not very happy with the solution
for shortcuts.  We will have to think a bit more about it.


Cheers.
-- 
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>