[vox] Another way to hose a system

[Micah J. Cowan]

On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 04:31:46PM -0800, Richard Crawford wrote:
> On Tuesday 03 January 2006 16:05, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> > A major win for aptitude in situations such as this is that if you
> > absolutely insist on shooting yourself in all your feet, aptitude
> > logs[1] its actions, including what files were installed and/or removed,
> > when, and why.  You can use the logs to generate lists of packages to
> > reinstall.  I've done this on several occasions when the results of a
> > too-long-delayed update went whack, with relatively little downside (a
> > bit of lost time on the update).
> 
> Heh.  Well, since doing this to myself, I've discovered the "Preview Changes" 
> option, which actually shows what packages will be installed, upgraded, or 
> removed with each transaction.  The stupid "preview" button is right next to 
> the "commit changes" button.  Just my own blindness at work.

It's still a broken GUI. Any UI that requires a user to click something
in order to view a serious warning that some important things may get
blitzed is broken. Any UI that will silently blitz things without
requiring more than a click is broken.

Compare that to the apt-get text shown upthread, where it issued a quite
noticable warning that you can't help but see; and required you type in
your "permission", to virtually guarantee that you really do mean to do
what you're about to do. The GUI equivalent should at least issue a
major warning and make the "Do It" button not the default one.

-- 
Micah J. Cowan
micah at cowan.name