[Slapt-get-devel] Proposal - handling of missing sources

[Jason Woodward]

Hi A.J.,

> So if such a package source remains present, but isn´t actually THERE - then 
> the update now fails, because this happens BEFORE gslapt and slapt-get´s 
> output is hard to catch (where DOES it go anyway ?) it is very hard to report 
> back to the user the status of this, let alone doing it in a way my APP can 
> understand, so the user has no real idea why some new package he wants isn´t 
> showing up.
> 
> My new proposal is thus:
> 1) File:/// sources should be treated differently. If ONLY a file:/// source 
> is present, obviously it needs to fail if it´s not there, but if there are 
> multiple sources, file:/// sources should be considdered non-compulsory they 
> are in probably 99% of cases going to be on removable media, so slapt-get 
> should add them if they are there, and just cleanly skip over them if not.

I have worked hard to make sure all sources are considered equally thus far.  I think it needs
to be really compelling and well thought out to change that.  Can this also be solved with
different config files?  

> 2) With regard to other sources, currently slapt-get gives no scriptable 
> output on failures. I think slapt-get should if an external source fails 
> change it´s exit status. Default ¨all went well¨ status should be 0, it 
> should always finish running, but if any source fails, set some variable to a 
> number relating to the source position in slapt-getrc, e.g. the first SOURCE= 
> line would if it fail set the variable to 1, the second to 2 etc. 
> At exit tiime, pass your exit() call this variable, that way if sources fail, 
> any outside scripts or programs will know WHICH source failed and can try to 
> handle it intelligently. This could range from just an error message to 
> temporarilly commenting out the source before retrying depending on the level 
> of automation needed and what the user wants.

It does currently return an exit status that is quite easy to check.

slapt-get --update || echo "return status tells us the update failed"
Retrieving package data
[ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-current/]...Cached
Retrieving patch list
[ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-current/]...Done
Retrieving checksum list
[ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/slackware/slackware-current/]...Cached
Reading Package Lists...Done
Retrieving package data [file:///no/such/dir/]...Failed to download: Couldn't open file
/no/such/dir/PACKAGES.TXT
Retrieving package data [file://i_should_not_resolve.com/]...Failed to download: Couldn't open
file /PACKAGES.TXT
Sources failed to download, correct sources and rerun --update
return status tells us the update failed


Maybe your wrapper could generate a custom oladrc file and then invoke slapt-get like this
slapt-get --config /path/to/oladrc --update || slapt-get --update

so that if those fail it falls back to the normal slapt-getrc file.


take care,
jason

--
Jason Woodward
woodwardj at jaos.org



--
Jason Woodward
woodwardj at jaos.org