Re: user feedback

Olivier Certner wrote in <3294629.dr8DHy2Ehi@ravel>:
> For now, I still tend to think that we should be able to somehow keep
> a distinction between base and ports for 'pkg delete -a'.  I didn't
> follow closely but IIRC you were considering solving that by tagging
> (some) base packages as vital, which may or may not be enough

this is not sufficient: vital prevents 'pkg delete -a' from working, but
doesn't affect 'pkg delete -af', since '-f' specifically means "i know
what i'm doing, ignore any safeguards and remove the packages". this
includes the vital flag.

> (argument against: Once you've removed some base packages by accident,
> but can still execute some basic commands thanks to those flagged
> vital, your system is not dead but you'd better have a set of base
> packages available to re-install; if you used poudriere just to
> rebuild ports, you don't necessarily have them handy; flagging all
> base packages as vital does not seem to make much sense, and anyway
> leads us back to square one).

if this were how it worked, that wouldn't be so bad: all sets are marked
as vital, including set-minimal (which should provide a completely
functional system by itself) as well as set-optional and set-base which
are selectable in bsdinstall.

however, the vital flag doesn't actually make a difference here.

rather than changing the behaviour of pkg options, perhaps a solution
here would be to more clearly indicate in the pkg delete output that
vital packags will be removed.  pkg already prints the list of packages
to be removed, but since base packages are usually sorted first, most
people probably don't bother reading the entire list.

if we split this into a separate section, clearly marked as "Vital
packages to be removed:", and perhaps changed to prompt to ask "Are you
sure you want to remove these packages which are vital to the operation
of the system?", people might be more likely to notice what they're
asking for?

> PS: Could you please consider removing or fixing the
> "Mail-Followup-To:" headers from your mails to mailing lists?  Not
> only they remove your address from the default list of recipients when
> replying to all (which you probably intended?),

yes, this is intentional: my MUA automatically adds these headers so i
don't get duplicate copies of replies to my list posts.  (i filter these
in procmail anyway, but sometimes list managers rewrite message-ids, so
that isn't reliable.)

> but they also add the address of the author of the mail you replied to
> in "To:", which is in general wrong and annoying.

i'm not sure what you mean here.  when i reply to a list post, i put the
author of the post i'm replying to in "To", and any list addresses or
other relevant recipients in "Cc".  that means over time, a particular
(sub)thread will gradually collect more addresses in the To/Cc list.

as far as i'm aware, this has always been the normal method to reply to
list posts; Mail-Followup-To simpliy codifies this in a more standard
way, and allows people to opt-out of receiving Cc copies if they don't
want to.

i do manually trim the Cc list if it's becoming excessively long, which
should also remove those addresses from Mail-Followup-To.

if other people set Mail-Followup-To headers as well, they won't end up
in To/Cc in the first place, so this only affects people who have
indicated they want the default mailing list behaviour (i.e., being on
the Cc list for replies).

it's not possible for me to manually set the To/Cc/Mail-Followup-To
list to only include people who are not subscribed to a particular list,
because i have no idea who is subscribed to what list.  i could just set
it to only include the list address, but then people who aren't
subscribed to the list won't receive replies.