On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 12:56:07 +0100 (CET), Santiago Vila <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Because the fact that there should not be conflicts among optional or >higher packages often forces Debian to choose which one, among a set >of packages which conflict at each other, should be the optional or >the standard one and put all the others in extra.
I see your point. >By choosing only among optional or higher packages (i.e. forgetting >about extra), a novice user which want to avoid problems will: > >a) find at least some "recommended" package for every task for which >there are several incompatible packages. > >b) not need to bother about resolving conflicts at all. > >This is not about CD creation at all. So this should be supported by a package selecting utility that could be configured to not display any low priority packages, but to pull in packages if they are depended on. I see, if an extra package is depended on that conflicts with a standard package, we are in for a problem. How about relaxing the priority depends rule to: "Packages of priority required, important, standard and optional must not depend on packages with priority extra". In my example, E and F could be Priority optional then, which is the appropriate value. >> >Just tell dselect to uninstall E and F. Where is the problem? >> >> Manual intervention is necessary here. Most people will see this as a >> bad bug in the E and F packages. > >Most people would see that as a bug if dselect didn't honor your >request of uninstalling E and F, but dselect does honor such requests. So people are required to manually undo mindless automatic installations because of a broken priority setting? >> >You will only have to do this once and dselect will remember that you >> >don't want E and F installed (unless they are required later by another >> >package). >> >> Everybody using B will have to do this once. > >They don't really *have* to do it. Packages E and F will typically be >libraries, which do nothing if no package uses them. Having them >installed is completely harmless. If you think asking a bunch of debconf questions that will never be actually used and taking up hard disk space and inodes is harmless, yes. >They can remove E and F if they don't want to have them installed, but >this has only to be made *once*. Once per installation which can be a major nuisance. >I don't understand why you make such a big problem from uninstalling a >package which you don't want. Why don't you just propose to downgrade >all important and standard packages to optional, then, since >uninstalling those which you don't want is such a big problem? The major problem for me is that this installation happens on already installed systems. For new installations, pulling in the packages is fine - when I do a new installation, I expect to uninstall a bunch of unwanted packages. During an upgrade, I expect that only these new packages are installed that are really needed. Usually, this is what Debian does. Greetings Marc -- -------------------------------------- !! No courtesy copies, please !! ----- Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Karlsruhe, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom " | Fon: *49 721 966 32 15 Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fax: *49 721 966 31 29
