[csw-maintainers] Removing old packages from the OS

[Philip Brown]

On 11/20/10, Maciej (Matchek) Blizinski <maciej at opencsw.org> wrote:
> The issue of removing packages from the OS is important in 2 main cases:
>
> - package renames (pkgname changes)
> - phasing out of old packages
>
> In the rename case, our method is to declare the old package
> incompatible with the renamed package.  For example:
>
> CSWbar (old package, removed from the catalog)
> CSWfoo (new package) incompatible with CSWbar
>
> I'm not sure what's the plan for the user actions.  I think that the
> assumption is that users will read messages from pkgadd, and realize
> that CSWbar should not be installed.  Having realized that, they will
> use their own tools to remove the old packages.  I might be wrong
> though.
>
> I remember a discussion on irc where Peter Bonivart mentioned that
> pkgutil automatically removed the incompatible packages.  Is that
> true?


I was staying out of this to let Peter B reply, but since he hasnt yet:

>From almost day 1 of CSW, this was the normal behaviour of pkg-get.
pkg-get removes packages that are declared conflicting with the
current package being installed.

pkgutil was, I am told, also updated to match this behaviour.


So, doing these renames by declaring conflicts with obsolete packages,
has the advantages of:

1. cleanup is automatic, when using pkg-get or pkgutil
2. it lets a user know beforehand, even if they are MANUALLY doing
"pkgadd newpkg",
(note: pkgadd, not pkg-get) that there is a conflict with older names,
and they need to clean up first.