[Soc-coordination] Declarative Diversions - Report 1

[Luk Claes]

On 06/04/2011 09:17 AM, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 04, 2011 at 07:29:02AM +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
>>> -----------------------------
>>> Details - Control File Syntax
>>> -----------------------------
>>> It will conform to RFC2822 style with the following format:
>>>  * Divert-From:
>>>  * Divert-To:
>>>  * Blank lines and lines beginning with '#' will be comments
>>>  
>>> 'Divert-To' will be optional and if it is ommitted then files being
>>> diverted 
>>> will have their filename changed to 'file.distrib'
> 
>> Would it not be better to have the filename changed to
>> 'file.<package_name>' if 'Divert-To' is not specified, so it's possible
>> to support more packages diverting the same file?
> 
> If you do that, how do you keep track of which package's file was diverted
> where, so that on *removal*, the files are put where they belong?

Indeed.

> Why do you *want* to have parallel diversions of the same file by more than
> one package?  It may seem the answer is obvious, but if you think about it I
> believe you'll find those semantics aren't actually useful.  *Nested*
> diversions can be useful (one package diverts foo to foo.distrib and wraps
> it; another package diverts foo.distrib to foo.distrib.distrib and wraps it
> again), but having two diversions happen in parallel, where the unpack order
> determines which package ends up on top, isn't useful at all.

Because people want to have both atomic changes of their /bin/sh as well
as being able to choose between more than 2 options for their /bin/sh ...

Cheers

Luk