[Distutils] PEP 376 -- new round

[Carl Meyer]

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Tarek Ziadé wrote:
> I am wondering *when* the depender(s) may vanish like that, leaving
> behind them orphaned dependencies.
> 
> I guess this can happen when:
> 
> 1/ a package (*looks like we can't help it calling a distribution a
> package after all...*) is removed by another
>    tool that it was installed with.
> 
> 2/ something goes wrong during uninstallation
> 
> So I wonder : will 1/ really happen that often ? and shouldn't 2/ be
> taken care by the high-level uninstaller ?


This is assuming a particular mode of uninstaller operation: immediate
removal of all no-longer-needed dependencies at the same moment when the
depender is uninstalled. It was clear during the original discussion of
REQUESTED several months back that this is not the only use case. Many
may prefer to have orphan-removal be a separate process run at a later
time (like deborphan).

In any case, regardless of how infrequently we _think_ two different
tools will be used to manage packages on a system, it seems
irresponsible to choose to prevent them from interoperating cleanly
around orphaned dependencies by choosing not to store the one bit of
metadata that would easily allow them to do so. What's the downside?

Carl
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