apt-class WAS: fai next level

[Diane Trout]

Jens Ruehmkorf <ruehmkorf at informatik.Uni-Koeln.DE> writes:

> > * A package can have the following desired install states: install, hold,
> >   deinstall, purge, and unknown.
> 
> You'd have to think whether it's good to mix package "selection states"
> (={install, deinstall, purge}) with package "flags" (={hold}). It's a
> different concept. With "unknown" you probably don't mean a regular state
> but an internal state that might occur.

Actually the states I listed are the valid selection states that dpkg
can consider a package to be in. I suspect that they're the states
that a package is supposed to move toward. 

> See above. Besides that use /etc/apt/preferences more extensively, it
> is much more powerful in some cases because of its use of regexes.

As far as I can tell there's sompe pretty impressive things that can
be done with apt/preferences. Unfortunatly I didn't know about it
until a few days ago and haven't had enough free time to experiment
yet. 

> > the email to be useful the program would need to provide a way for the
> > sysadmin to log into the machine and connect to the apt-get session.
> 
> Could you specify this somewhat further?

The idea was that the program that was running the apt-get command
could redirect stdin/out/err to a socket or pipe. That would allow an
external program or user to connect to the program and interact with
whatever apt-get is currently doing.

diane