[gobolinux-users] Freshen 3.0.0

[Michael Homer]

On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 7:26 AM, Isaac Dupree <isaacdupree at charter.net> wrote:
> Michael Homer wrote:
>  > `Freshen -s <list>` will include only the updates absolutely necessary
>  > to upgrade the programs in the given list to the latest versions - it
>  > won't try to upgrade GCC just because you're trying to install the new
>  > Firefox. `Freshen -s -U <list>` will perform the actual installation;
>  > it has a shortcut, `Freshen -i/--install`.
>  >
>  > `Freshen -i` with no list provided will install the updates from the
>  > last update list displayed. That is to make the review process easier;
>  > you can run `Freshen -s foo bar baz`, read over what it's going to
>  > upgrade, and then just run `Freshen -i` to install what you just saw.
>  > That is the recommended procedure for use.
>  that doesn't sound thread-safe.  As in, a Freshen process run in the
>  background or in another shell could change what 'Freshen -i' does.  How
>  can it know which Freshen -s run you meant?
Don't do that, then. The data it will use is from the last run to
*complete*, and doesn't include installation runs (which clear the
cache entirely, because whatever data is there is no longer valid). It
should very rarely be ambiguous, but it is possible.
>  Often I just used --pretend/-p followed by shell history omitting
>  that option so it would install.
Which gets tiresome after a while. But you can still do that if you
want, using the -U or -i option manually. The magic -i is just a
shortcut for when you know what you're doing.
>  > The -x option is now more powerful, and can be used in combination
>  > with a list of programs to update: `Freshen -x GTK+ -U Firefox` will
>  > skip GTK+, but install all other upgrades. It also works as a
>  > wildcard; `Freshen -x KDE` will exclude anything named KDE-* as well.
>
>  sounds convenient but dangerous.  For example, GLib is a prefix of Glibc
>  (modulo case); Linux is a prefix of Linux-PAM; I'm sure there are other
>  examples.  Does the wildcard work as *KDE* or as KDE* (where "*" means
>  anything added there)?  Maybe wildcarding should have to be explicit.
As I said, it excludes anything named "KDE-*". Even if it were
case-insensitive (which it isn't, through laziness rather than
design), "glib-" is not a prefix of "glibc". It is mostly intended for
the cases like KDE itself, where you don't want it accidentally
upgrading you to KDE4 but you also don't want to exclude all the
components explicitly.

The filtering may become more powerful in future and allow you to
specify globs or regular expressions, but for the moment that's all it
does.
-Michael