launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[James Westby <jw+debian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2 Aug 2010 16:58:52 -0400, Barry Warsaw <barry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Aug 02, 2010, at 04:40 PM, James Westby wrote:
> 
> >I think I have heard that we would like to nuke PPAs so that users can
> >reuse the name.
> 
> Yes.  Right now, it's at least moderately confusing that "deleting a PPA"
> doesn't actually delete it, in the sense of "wipe its existence from the face
> of the earth" :).  I've certainly created PPAs which I've abandoned and have
> had to play games with archive names because the PPA namespace can't be
> reclaimed.
> 
> (I've also been confused that deleting individual packages doesn't delete
> their publishing records.  This means you can't resync a package after that's
> been done the first time, until the Ubuntu package gets updated.)

Well, that's one of the issues with allowing archive deletion.

If you have an archive with users, deleting that archive and then
uploading a package with a lower version that before will mean that only
new users get that package. This may be suprising.

Not that it's necessarily a reason to prevent anyone from doing it, but
this is an example of why archive management isn't always obvious to
those inexperienced in it.

(Note that uploading the same version as before with different contents
isn't a problem with apt. Apt will do the right thing and get you the
new version, but there may be other tools that break.)

Thanks,

James