[Yum-devel] "doastold" option, or, putting code where my mouth is

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Mar 09, 2005 at 04:24:12PM -0700, Michael Stenner wrote:
> 1) I think "hey, I want gsl", so I do yum install gsl and then notice
>    that the available version is too old.  Note: I DID NOT think "hey,
>    I want gsl 1.5" although you might argue that I should.  Sorry, not
>    always the way my brain works.

Yeah, but what is yum gonna do about it? And, what's the harm if it does
install an older version? This isn't a critical problem, since it's stopped
and easily undone.

> 2) I think "hey, I want foo", so I do yum install foo and notice that
>    it requires XEmacs, which I don't want.

This, however, _might_ be a critical problem (not with XEmacs, but with some
other package). Yum isn't smart enough to tell if it is, though, so some
human intervention makes sense.

And, there happens to be something yum *can* do about it -- ask for user
review.


>   a) this would give us 3 levels of questioning, and few people would
>      ever understand what the middle level does

I think you're underestimating people. It's easy to explain the option
succinctly, *especially* when framed by the other choices. It's basically
the default behavior of many other programs.

If this is a really, really big sticking point, having prompts for removals
but not for installs might be a compromise. (However, I still prefer the
prompting when additional packages are selected.)

>   b) give us one more command line (and config file?) option
>   c) add more code and documentation to maintain

Always a concern. However, I've tried to make the patch as small and
non-intrusive as possible -- it's 41 lines changed in 5 files, and almost a
quarter of that is documentation.

>   d) STILL miss questions that the user would appreciate (see above)
>   e) STILL ask questions the user considers annoying (gsl-devel
>      requires gsl... well, duh, of course you should install it)

It's not (entirely) about annoyance. The larger problem I see is repetition
of prompting. This is an important usability principle -- prompt for
surprising or distructive behavior, and don't prompt when you're just going
to do as told.

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>