[Aptitude-devel] Bug#301100: aptitude: 'justification' field

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Control: tags -1 + moreinfo


Hi Dann,

2005-03-23 20:04 dann frazier:
>Package: aptitude
>Version: 0.2.15.8-1
>Severity: wishlist
>
>I'd like to see a feature in aptitude that allows for "justification" tags
>for packages on a system.
>
>For instance, on a multi-admin system, it would be nice for admin1 to be able
>to aptitude install a package, and add a note justifying its existance.
>
>For example:
>
># aptitude install docbook-utils \
>  --justification="User allison needs this for her tech-writing class, we can
>                   remove it at the end of spring semester 2005."
>
>aptitude when then store this justification for the docbook-utils package and
>for all of the dependencies it drags in (which should probably have an
>automatic justification added that refers to the docbook-utils justification,
>and classifies itself as a dependency).
>
>When cleaning up the system, aptitude could be queried to determine why
>certain packages are installed.
>
>I could imagine people using this text field for rfc822 formatted data, and
>use that for categorization.  Example fields might be:
>
>Users: bobm, brett, dannf
>Courses: CS143
>Purgeable: No
>Pulled-in-by: python2.4
>Installed-by: dannf
>Upgrade-restrictions: Don't upgrade!! new version breaks abi w/ user app
>
>User removals, course cancellations, etc, could all trigger cleanup events.
>
>aptitude seems like a logical place for this feature, since it already seems
>to track why some packages have been installed implicitly.
>
>Even if you don't have the time/interest to implement this feature yourself,
>please let me know if you think aptitude is a good place for it.

... and 10+ years later, a reply to this.

The following is less fancy than it was requested, but I think that user
tags present for a few years can be used for this, only that the spaces
are not allowed in the tags (they were allowed once, but caused problems
and were removed since).

  aptitude --add-user-tag Allison-needs-it docbook-utils
  
  aptitude search -F '%p %T' '?user-tag(.*)'

etc.

man aptitude for more info.

Of course, even if user-tags in aptitude are simple, the tags applied to
can be stored in another file/DB easily, and then attach the other data.


So in principle I think that this request is basically fulfilled, not
closing yet in the case that there's some comment.


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