On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 08:37:12PM +0200, Stefan Alfredsson wrote: > What I would like is to have some sort of flag or meta information to > indicate what language/es a package contain, so I can write a script > to easily weed out packages I know I will never use (and maybe include > packages in a specific language). > > For me this issue is kind of resolved by having net access everywhere, > but I guess others could benefit from such functionality.
Ok, I've got what you need. Well, I've been promoting some idea of mine and this is a perfect example, so here we go: I want to split up the current package trees in multiple directories. By adding or removing stuff to /etc/apt/sources.list you can control which parts of the package archive is visible to you. Example: We take all the packages that deal with japanese and put them in a seperate directory tree. If you want to make those packages visible to apt/dselect/etc... you'll add a line like the following to /etc/apt/sources.list deb http://http.us.debian.org/JP stable main contrib non-free ^^ If you don't want to have those packages around to slow dselect down remove it. You will also save yourself the bandwith necessary for downloading package information about those packages. Another possibility would be to use a different server. Japanese packages will mostly be used in Japan, so why host them in the USA: deb http://ftp.debian.JP/ stable main contrib ^^ Changing /etc/apt/sources.list manually is easy, but an automated way of handling this would be easier. Also there is the problem of knowing what different sections are available. One way to handle this would be through task-packages. Currently task-packages just depend on a number of other packages. However task-packages could also change /etc/apt/sources.list or install a file into an /etc/apt/sources.d/ like structure. So task-jp would install a /etc/apt/sources.d/jp.list . jp.list contains deb http://ftp.debian.jp/ stable main contrib and from then on the system will suddenly know about japanese packages. -- Casper Gielen [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- People just generally like to disagree. Bill Joy
