Written by CAsurfer the 29 Feb 08 at 15:09.
Category: System.
Related project:
Nothing/Others.
Status: New
Rationale
Every apt-get command a user issues should be recorded and displayed somewhere obvious, such as Synaptic.
1) This would allow users to find and delete programs they installed ages ago but have forgotten about.
2) It would make porting customizations to new installs easier. A user who has converged through customization to a happy state would be able to look back at everything she did to get there, and easily reapply the same steps to new installs.
cheesehead, there are at least 2 more problems with File -> History:
1) It doesn't differentiate between commands specifically requested by the user, and commands implied by the user's commands. An example where this used to matter is the package linux-headers-generic, which always depends on the latest kernel headers available. When I "install" this package, it actually installs other packages on which it depends, which have specific version numbers, and those packages are recorded in File -> History. If I want to use File -> History to customize a new install, I'm out of luck, because the latest linux-headers is almost certainly a newer version. BTW, I said "used to matter" above because it looks like linux-headers-generic is now a part of the default install; however, I'm sure there are other packages to which this applies.
2) File -> History doesn't allow the user to easily separate installs from upgrades. From the point of view of a customizer, it's the installs that matter - they're the commands that add the extra apps you want. On the other hand, almost everyone keeps her system fully upgraded by default, so there's no use in listing the upgrades.