On Sun, 2006-04-23 at 10:18, Joey Hess wrote: > Gustavo Franco blogged: > > In Ubuntu there' s ubuntu-meta source package that results in > > [ubuntu-minimal][1], [ubuntu-standard][2] and [ubuntu-desktop][3]. They're > > metapackages and the list of packages is built with a tool called germinate > > based on a seed in the web. I've a [branch of cjwatson' ubuntu seed][4] and > > asked him to upload [germinate][5] in Debian, he did! To avoid confusion, > > i've > > renamed "our ubuntu-meta" to utnubu-meta and it will be included in [utnubu > > alioth group ][6]in svn soon. > > I've very confused by the approach you are taking here. Debian already > has its own way to install a desktop, namely tasksel's desktop tasks. > Any help with maintaining that would be appreciated; but introducing a > competing thing taken from Ubuntu into Debian doesn't seem at all > helpful from my perspective, unless I've misunderstood what you're > doing. > > This seems to be a metapackage that depends on 239 packages[3]. Debian > has already rejected using large metapackages such as that for many > reasons, including: > > * The way they clog up britney by tying a lot of otherwise unrelated > packages together. (As a sometime member of the release team, I feel > like I'm in the shower seeing the shadow of a figure with a knife.) > * Their general fragility, breaking if any one semi-unimportant package > in the metapackage is removed from testing for any reason, or is > unavailable for any one architecture for any reason. > * Their all or nothing nature making it a pain to put them onto CDs, > if any one semi-unimportant package doesn't fit the whole metapackage > won't go on. > * Their lack of a clean way to remove the metapackage (semi-addressed by > aptitude). > > We tried it, it doesn't work for us[4]. I still have the scars. Tasksel > avoids all of these problems. If you are interested in maintaining > tasksel's desktop or other tasks, that could be arranged.
Metapackages are great. Need to add KDE to a system? Wham. Done. If you don't like them, don't install them. Ideally, tasksel would be changed to use the dependencies of any meta package WITHOUT installing the meta package. * This would allow those who want to use tasksel followed by selective uninstall to do their thing. * This would allow those who want to install meta packages to do their thing. * Or any combination of the above. * This would keep the two mechanisms in sync. * This exposes the task recommendations to other package dependency/management systems rather than keeping them hidden in /usr/share/tasksel/debian-tasks.desc. * This would avoid having to install 1.7MB of tasksel and write an extra parser in order to obtain 15KB of dependency info in /usr/share/tasksel/debian-tasks.desc. --Mike Bird -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
