RE: [ECOS] ecosconfig patch

["Patrick Doyle" <wpd at delcomsys dot com>]

> I would go further than that and make "-n" a valid option for all the
> ecosconfig subcommands, i.e. a --no-update flag that suppresses any
> modifications to the file system. That would be somewhat similar to
> cvs -n. A possible patch to implement this is at the bottom.
>
Thanks... That is a much better solution than the one I was proposing.  I'll
give the patch a try sometime in the next week or so.  Thanks for the credit
in the ChangeLog :-).

Your discussion about modifying the import/export behavior raises a whole
bunch of interesting points, a few of which I may have uncovered myself as I
continued to dig deeper.  I had gotten just far enough in to know that I was
over my head and should probably check in with higher authorities before
proceeding.  If I were to have some time to look into this, where would you
prefer that I start?  (I would not be insulted at all if you "prefered" that
I not start at all, because of all of the complications that you raised, and
because of the lack of ability to commit to certain amount of time to work
on this).

I had not realized that there would be a backwards compatible way to add a
new command (such as "remove_package") to savefiles, but knowing that is
possible, my first thought would be to add such a command, modify the
"export" capability to list (in the savefile) the removed packages the same
way that the "check" capability does, and to modify the "import" capability
to remove the packages thus listed.  Even if I didn't modify the "export"
capability, "removed_package" commands could be incorporated into
hand-edited .ecm files as you pointed out.

It seems that you have some objections to this (perhaps because it will
never work), or, at least, a desire to see it done "correctly" rather than
"expediently".  So, I welcome your comments on this plan.

--wpd