[Aptitude-devel] Bug#833310: Bug#833310: option to make "forget new" non-interactive as before

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

2016-08-07 10:50 Harald Dunkel:
>>
>> Also, for me it's hard to imagine why one would bother with "New" for systems that one doesn't have a personal interest in monitoring very closely, and receives new packages continuously like unstable (e.g. main development system only).
>>
>
>I am not sure if I got this correctly.
>
>This is not about "unstable" or "development systems only", but about
>a new aptitude that might be included with Stretch on release date.
>Of course Stretch is very volatile today, but this will go away.

I'll try to rephrase.

For me, "New" is a feature only useful when one wants to monitor very
closely what's going on in one's machine.  To see what "New" packages
entered the distribution, for example an interpreter of a new
programming language or a new game, and whether I want to try them or
not.

This --again, for me-- usually happens only in machines or servers that
one wants to be very picky about what to install, and mostly when using
unstable or testing (or well, stable, but in that case "new" packages
don't come very often :-) ).


So for me, this feature is incompatible (as in, not useful at all) with
an scenario like what it was described, managing automatically several
systems to upgrade them often, perhaps every day, and those systems
using completely different distributions.

In that scenario the new packages in each machine are completely
different, so if one does actually want to review them, one has to press
different keys for each of the distributions anyway, because the number
of subtrees and packages is different in that case.  So the cssh method
doesn't work for reviewing those packages at the same time on all hosts.

If one doesn't review them, there's not harm in not pressing "f", the
new packages will just accumulate in that subtree, but there's no other
major consequence.

And if one doesn't review them but press "f" as a matter of habit in
every update, just to not have the "New" subtree at all, the
Aptitude::Forget-New-On-Update config is probably more useful, so one
doesn't even waste time pressing "f" after every upgrade.


So in summary, and coming back to the original title, "forget new" as a
feature is all about interactiveness, and totally contrary to managing
several hosts automatically pressing "f" in all of them without further
considerations.  If it's to use in a non-interactive way, e.g. just
"forget new" always as a matter of course, there are better methods to
deal with it non-interactively.


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