Re: Design of setup.exe can make uninstallation of circularly dependent packages impossible

["Max Bowsher" <maxb at ukf dot net>]

Sridhar Ramesh wrote:
> I'm not sure if this is the right mailing list for this, but I'll give it 
> a
> shot anyway.
>
> I've been trying to uninstall the X11 packages for Cygwin, but a circular
> dependency combined with the nature of setup.exe seems to make this
> impossible. xorg-x11-bin requires libXft and libXft requires xorg-x11-bin.
> So, if both are installed, they become very difficult to remove: First you
> select one for uninstallation, then when you go to select the other for
> uninstallation you must toggle from Keep to Reinstall first, which 
> reselects
> the first one for installation. The only possible way to select two things 
> at
> once is if both are in the same category, but in this case, they aren't, 
> so
> it appears there really is no way out. The same circular dependency 
> problem
> exists with xorg-x11-bin and libXft1.
>
> It seems this problem could easily be fixed if setup.exe toggled from Keep 
> to
> Uninstall before toggling to Reinstall, instead of the current scheme. 
> Then
> one could select packages for uninstallation without accidentally 
> activating
> dependencies, and circularly dependent packages in different categories 
> could
> thus be uninstalled.

That's a good idea - changing the order might allow a solution to this which 
does not involve totally redesigning the package picker. Time for me to dive 
into that bit of the code, I think.

> Like I said, I'm not sure if this is the right mailing list on which to 
> point
> out this problem. But for the time being, I just wanted to bring this to 
> some
> attention (and also ask if there is any other way to uninstall X11).

Here is fine for initial reports (providing they mention setup.exe in the 
subject), and is the correct place for general questions. Cygwin-apps is the 
home of any developer-oriented discussion of setup.exe.

Max.


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