Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Illegal news item name
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 01:06:06
Message-Id: 19071.29304.330327.963247@a1ihome1.kph.uni-mainz.de
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] Illegal news item name by Vlastimil Babka
1 >>>>> On Mon, 10 Aug 2009, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
2
3 > unfortunately this is what happens in current eselect-news.
4 [bunch of bash error messages deleted]
5
6 Good catch. The news-tng module of eselect-1.1* handles it more
7 gracefully (no bash errors), but it still displays an error message.
8
9 > This is because the old entry stays in
10 > /var/lib/gentoo/news/news-gentoo.read
11
12 Seems that we have no real procedure for removal of news items.
13 Unfortunately GLEP 42 only says that they can be removed, but doesn't
14 specify what should happen with the entry in the news-*.unread or
15 news-*.read file.
16
17 Since the package manager adds these lines, I guess that it would be
18 its task to delete them from news-*.{unread,read} if the news item
19 itself was removed. Or should the eselect module handle it?
20
21 > So what to do? Fix eselect first and then do the rename? Rename now,
22 > recommend purge, and fix eselect later?
23
24 Seems that just keeping the item with the bad name will cause least
25 breakage for users. Sigh.
26
27 > Update GLEP 42 to allow dots in news item filenames?
28
29 Please don't.
30
31 > Any technical reason they are not allowed, except for hypothetical
32 > compatibility (nothing broken was reported due to this item yet).
33
34 The news-tng module has an option to export news items in mbox format,
35 and needs to generate message-ids for this. It's natural to generate
36 their local part from the news item's name, and then it's good to be
37 conservative on the allowed character set.
38
39 Ulrich