Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Casey Harkins <charkins AT upl.cs.wisc.edu>]

On Thu, 18 Mar 2004, Andrew wrote:
> There is a bug I filed for having default answers to config questions,
> which basically boils down to having them be always on, or always off.
> Feel free to expand on it or come up with a solution, but its not really
> that big of a deal compared with other things that we have on our plate.

It can be rather annoying in some cases. Here's an example that happened
to me recently. I did an unattended system-update. I had samba installed,
but a new query had been added to CONFIGURE for active directory support,
defaulting to yes. This in turn added openldap and krb5 to the install
queue, triggering all sorts of other spells to rebuild with kerb and ldap
support. I came back and the update was finished. When I dispelled krb5
and openldap, the spells that had been triggered to rebuild with kerberos
and ldap support were *not* triggered to remove that support.

So there is definitely some room for improvement here. An installed spell
should not install any new dependencies on an update unless they are
required. Many of the cases where on_cast/cast_self triggers are used
should also have on_dispel/cast_self.

Just some observations. Not show stoppers, but will probably save users
(and anyone helping them in irc) from some headaches. 

Too much sun today ... I apologize if this makes absolutely no sense. ;-)

-casey