Re: Who keeps messing with my Menu drawer???

[Matt <madmatt bits bris ac uk>]

Daniel Lyddy wrote:

| I thought I quite clearly stated in my original message: "the rpms I use
| come from Mandrake, and *many* of them have the following lines in their
| RPM spec files."  I don't know whether English is that much different in
| the UK, but here in America, "many"  is always greater than one.  I am
| NOT installing and uninstalling the same RPM, and I don't see how anyone
| who carefully read what I wrote could think I was doing something so
| obviously silly.

English is english, sure a couple of words might be spelt differently,
but UK many = US many last time I checked. And on the subject of doing
something silly, it's best not to assume anything...

| Again, it's happening after I install or uninstall ONE OF MANY RPMs that
| seemingly have these pre- and post-install scripts, built to mess with
| your menu.  My point is that it's a bad idea to do this, as the menus
| change automagically without asking the user.

Well here's an idea, install *all* your software, then change your
settings. Seriously though, the RPM script, for the sake of the majority,
installs the various menu items in a default place. Also, due to it not
being vastly intelligent, it'll assume that the existing menu structure is
as-per the default as Mandrake/RedHat/... originally intended.

If the script has genuinely changed something that it had no need to do,
then yes, this is possibly a bug, at least. There's no easy way to work
out which RPM did it apart from logging and checking everything you
install, one by one.

| I think perhaps you've missed the point of my message.  I don't really
| mind all that much if an application "adds" itself somehow to my menu
| when I install it.  What I object to is when that application alters
| entries that have nothing to do with it by overwriting my entire
| customized menu with some developer's idea of what the whole menu should
| look like.

Do you want to volunteer to write more intelligent RPM install scripts? In
fact, I'm sure something like that *is* in development...

| I *did* change my menus to be the way I want, and I *did* archive copies
| of those setups.  I shouldn't have to reinstall those copies after
| installing or reinstalling any one of MANY RPMs.

I think you're hoping packages in general to be pyschic and work out that
the menu entry does exist, just not where Mandrake intended...

It's mildly annoying, I agree, but this sort of thing is why I don't
personally use a package based dist. I like to know just what is going on
with my system. Also, to make any use of a package-based dist, you have to
stick with packages for everything, otherwise you lose the whole point.

Matt

PS. Please don't send me copies of your post, I'm on the GNOME list and
therefore will get it in due course, thanks.