[csw-maintainers] A chain of updates

[Maciej (Matchek) Bliziński]

This topic is related to package renames.

Here's how we generally handle renames:

Stage 1: The starting point

CSWwrong-name / wrong_name

Stage 2: Content moved, stub exists

CSWwrong-name / wrong_name_stub
CSWgood-name / good_name

Stage 3: The stub is removed

CSWrong-name is removed from the catalog
CSWgood-name / good_name / incompatible with CSWwrong-name

We have done a lot of transitions from Stage 1 to Stage 2, but very
little transitions from Stage 2 to Stage 3.  The main obstacle with
2→3 is that we currently can't assume that users update packages on a
regular basis, and we want upgrades to work from any to any historical
states of the catalog.  This effectively blocks us from performing the
2→3 transitions.

Here's where named releases can help.  We could require sequential
updates. For example, legacy→dublin would be a valid update path, and
so would be dublin→kiel. However, legacy→kiel would not.

If we tracked the renames, we could identify all packages that e.g.
have gone 1→2 during the legacy→dublin transition, and have them go
2→3 during the dublin→kiel transition.

Thoughts?

Maciej

P.S. By “legacy” I mean http://mirror.opencsw.org/opencsw/legacy/ - it
has been also known as “stable”, but I want to move away of equating
the words “stable catalog” with the content from 2008.