[wpkg-users] default profile?

[Rainer Meier]

Hi Andrew,

On 25.04.2011 21:16, Andrew Struiksma wrote:
> I have our profiles setup this way but on occasion it would be nice to be able to EXCLUDE a default packages without creating/maintaining any entirely new profile. Is there any way to exclude packages? Using your example above, it would be nice to be able to do something like:
> 
> <profile id='profile3'>
>   <depends profile-id='default' />
>   <blockpackage package-id='package1' />
> </profile>
> 
> I have over 10 packages in my default profile and every now and then we have a special case where we don't want to install one of the default package on a host (or batch of hosts).

No. There is no way to "blacklist" a package and there are no plans to implement
such a thing at time of writing. Reasons are that such functionality would be
very prone to errors:
- People asking why a specific package is not installed
- People complaining about failures when a package is blacklisted in some
profile or profile dependency which is a required dependency for some other
package in the tree.

Such functionality can easily create a lot of scenarios which create trouble and
are very hard to debug without following the whole dependency and profile tree.
The drawback of not having such a "feature" is that you might have to create
your own profile if you have an exception. I personally see this as an advantage
since you do it ON PURPOSE and you're easily aware what exactly is the impact on
the change.

Up to now nobody could ever draw a scenario where blacklisting is absolutely
unavoidable and the use-case could not be done using custom profiles. Remember
that for WPKG it does not cause any re-installation if you just re-arange the
profiles.

so for example:

<profile id='default'>
  <package package-id='package1' />
  <package package-id='package2' />
</profile>

<profile id='profile1'>
  <depends profile-id='default' />
  <package package-id='package3' />
</profile>

is exactly identical to:
<profile id='profile1'>
  <package package-id='package1' />
  <package package-id='package2' />
  <package package-id='package3' />
</profile>

when assigning "profile1". So if you re-arrange the profiles WPKG will not
perform any unnecessary change on the system.

br,
Rainer