Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: > - Installing the list of package we want > > Using meta-packages (ie packages consisting only of dependencies) > to install the packages we want. Used hooks in base-config to > get them installed during first time installation. Not too happy > about the meta-package approach, as it is fragile and break > easily if some dependency is unavailable.
If you need to generate your own Packages files, which you might want to do for various reasons, you could instead add Task: overrides to the Packages files. Then use 'tasksel install' (that command may need to be fixed first) to install the task. This would sidestep the dependency problem. Alternatively, you could get a similar effect by making the task package only recommend most of the stuff in the task (except perhaps a few key packages), and installing it with aptitude, which can pull in recommends. I am actually thinking about switching tasks back over to real packages using recommends like this, a few years down the road. I would be interested in the results of a test case. > - Preconfigure the packages we install > > Using two different approaches: (1) Load answers into the debconf > database before the packages are installed using some home-make > scripts, and (2) rewrite/replace configuration files using > cfengine at the end of the installation if the package is unable > to configure what we want using debconf. I'm fairly satisfied > with this solution, but am not sure if the method used to feed > the debconf database is the best available. I believe the best > option would be to extend all the packages we use to make it > possible to configure everything we need using debconf answers. As discussed at DebConf, I would like to make debconf have better support for pre-populating a database, when I find some time to work on it. > - Configure default language for all users > > Using a custom script to rewrite config files to modify the > default language/locale. Could this fit into the language-env package somehow? Debian needs to go a few steps further in providing a localised system after install, with language and locale set to the install langage. At the moment language-env only displays a stupid debconf message when installed, and allows per-user configuration, but it seems the place to put a global config too. -- see shy jo
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