[tex-live] tlmgr reports success when not removing packages

[Adam R. Maxwell]

On Jun 30, 2012, at 15:26 , karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry) wrote:

> But even if we change it, obviously it will be after the release, so
> would it actually help you?  If you want to support the tlmgr that will
> ship with TL'12, you'll still need to handle this.

I wouldn't break support for previous versions of tlmgr; the current TLU
should work with TL 2009-2012, I think.

>    I could keep track of the packages requested for removal in TLU,
>    then see which (if any) were removed by comparing with a subsequent
>    listing
> 
> To what end?

When a user tries to remove a package, I run the command and show a
message saying "removal succeeded" if exit status was zero.  Users
find it confusing when the package is not actually removed, but I claim
that it was successful.

If I tracked whether packages were actually removed, I could give a more
accurate message.  It just occurred to me that perhaps tlmgr itself
should return nonzero.  No urgency here, but I was just thinking about it
while responding to a bug report.

> Maybe you should always call remove --force?

Users can forcibly remove a package by holding down the option key and
selecting a semi-hidden menu item.  I'm not inclined to make it any
easier for users to muck up their system.

thanks,
Adam