Hi
first I'm just a debian-user, if you guys don't mind my 2 cents then
here it is:
I think a task packages is a bad approach to the too-many-packages
problems. The organisation of the packages shouldn't be part of the
dependency system, IMHO. This organization is intended to help clue-less
debian-user (like me) to navigate the overwhelming debian archive and
selecting the desired packages without much effort.
This organisation should be implemented orthogonally to the dependency
system, such as:
+-------------------+
/| | The DAG of Debian | |\
/ | | packages with | | \
task view | | | dependencies as | | | project view
\ | | vertices | | /
\| | | |/
+-------------------+
________
\ /
------
functionality view
A view is almost-tree structure such as:
functionality---->tool---->ui---->x11-windows-manager---->sawfish
| | | |-->wmaker
| | |
| | |-->x11-screen-saver--->xlockmore-gl
| | |
| | |-->gtk-engines--->gtk-engines-thinice
| |
| |-->www---->browser---->communicator
| |-->server---->apache
| |-->command-line-client--->wget
|
|-->apps--->office---->financial---->emma
|-->gnucash
|-->gnumeric
....
task--->all-python---->python-core---->python-base
| |-->python-doc
|-->python-dev---->python-zlib
|-->python-gdbm
...
project---->python---->core--->python-base
| |-->doc--->...
| |-->libs--->...
| |-->ui---->...
| |-->...
|
|->gnome---->core---->....
|-->ui----->themes---->
|-->libs--->...
|-->apps---->...
Selecting a group in a view will select all sub-nodes. Unselecting a
node won't affect the selection of its parents. That is, the arrows in
the views are group relationships and not dependencies.
The sawfish package would have a new control line such as:
Package: sawfish
Groups: project.gnome.ui.windows-manager,
task.gnome-all.windows-manager,functionality.tool.ui.x11-windows-manager
Package: libncurses5
Groups: project.ncurses.ncurses5.lib,task.ncurses.runtime.ncurses5,
functionality.runtime-lib.ui.console.ncurses
Just my confused and naive 2 cents.
L.D.
