Mailinglist Archive: yast-devel (43 mails)

[Klaus Kaempf <kkaempf@xxxxxxx>]

* J. Daniel Schmidt <jdsn@xxxxxxx> [Nov 06. 2008 20:45]:
> Hi,
>
> This is a question to the old YaST hackers:
>
> I heard the rumor that there once was a policy that YaST packages should 
> not require other (non-YaST) packages directy but rather do a check at 
> runtime if everything is there and ask to install packages if missing.

Its not a rumor, its a fact ;-)

> There are valid use cases for this where I can see that this makes 
> sense, eg. you configure the user authentication method LDAP and 
> pam_ldap is missing. It does not make sense to include pam_ldap then in 
> some YaST package because it is required due to a configuration 
> setting.
>
> My question relates to yast2-x11 where the first action of the module 
> is, to check if its required packages are there.
> IMHO these packages should be required by the package directly.
> Btw. packages that do not exist at all are filtered out of this list.
>
> If these packages for some reason are not available for the current 
> architecture or system then this very YaST module should not have been 
> installed in the first place.

Not quite. The rule is: YaST should be there, even in a minimal
installation, to guide the user.

The use case is:
User does a minimal, textmode installation. Maybe because of limited
bandwidth, maybe because its a headless (without graphics card) server.
Now he wants to configure X11. YaST is there to help and on starting
yast2-x11, the user is prompted to install missing packages.


Now the question is: Should a YaST module do the test for missing
packages at every start ?
I'd say no ! This test should only be done at first start. If there's
already a configuration (e.g. for X11), the YaST module should assume
all packages are installed and user wants a reconfiguration only.
Testing for missing packages should be optional (e.g. via menu item or
button) in this case.

> So my question (finally) is:
>  Are there any technical reasons (and what exactly) why we used to do it 
> this way over the years or will it hurt anybody if I require the needed 
> packages directly??

Its not technical, its more product management ;-)

Hth,

Klaus
---
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg)

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