Possible feature
Martinsos opened this issue · comments
Hi @DerekTBrown, thank you for this great package! I love the idea.
I was thinking about possible feature: while I love having the list of packages that I use, in case something goes wrong, it would also be great if I could optionally adding a comment/note to each of them. That way I could remember later what did I install that package for, and is it still useful or not any more. Otherwise, I have to look up each of them to check what was it for, and sometimes I am just not sure if it is a leftover from some older times or if it still useful for something.
I see certain interest in it here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=173071.
Regarding UX, I think explicit command would work fine: pg comment mprime "Installed it for testing CPU overheating behaviour."
Does that make any sense, what do you think? If yes and you think it would fit well, I would be happy to make a PR.
I love the feature idea- I think there is some question about how it would be best to implement it.
Having a separate command seems kindof burdensome. What I would think about doing is creating a separate option for plist-gist that runs an additional ALPM Hook which take as input a comment. Does that seem like it would work?
Ok, I see where you're coming from.
So on each install it would ask you to provide a comment? I am thinking that might be somewhat too invasive, since often you will not want to provide any comment.
That is why I suggested going with a command tool, so that it is user who initiates the action. But I see how that is also not the best solution - user will have to remember the command in order to enter the comment.
Hm, I am not sure what is the best way here :)! I wouldn't worry about how difficult it is to implement, but about UX. So we either ask each time and have a chance of being boring to user, or we have an explicit command that user has to remember to use (but if he does not remember to use it, does he even need it?).
What do you think? Maybe it's ok going with the hook option, it can always be changed if users do not like it.
Maybe add it as an option to the package-query package directly? You could then add a comment at install time, or after install like yaourt -S handbrake -M "I ripped a DVD once" or pacman -S handbrake -M "I ripped a DVD once" .
Hm that sounds interesting! Is there a way to add this option programatically to package-query through plist-gist, or would it have to be added to the source code of package-query?
Theoretically speaking, you could process the arguments from the package-query command redundantly looking for a special flag, but that might cause conflicts down the road. I would pitch this idea to package-query (link them to this thread), and see if package comments are something they would be interested in implementing.
Uh ok, that sounds more complicated :)! I don't believe they would be interested in something like that, it sounds too much on the edge of use cases - it does make sense to me to have it in optional tool like yours, but in package-query hm.