[...] > > X-+-xbase > > | > > +-xservers > > | > > +-xfonts > > This looks good. Of course the groups should be collapsable so the user can get where he wants fast. > > Yes, this is what I was thinking of. Right now the only way to > 'associate' packages with one another, besides the section name, is to > use a common prefix in the name so they show up together in the same > place in dselect's screen. Imagine a user looking at the huge list of > packages (in X11 section) that start with 'x'. Yes, the dependencies > will auto-select most of the necessary packages if one is picked by the > user, but when I did this by picking xbase, I believe 'xterm' never got > auto-selected, nor is the user made aware of other 'significantly > related' packages like the other xfont and xserver packages. How would > a new user with little experience with Unix/X11 know he needs 'xterm'? > xterm isn't necessary, I use rxvt instead, and the splitting of X11 let me install without xterm, which is good. The problem of needing *some* sort of terminal can be solved by having both xterm and rxvt provide the same "terminal" capability, and have x-base suggest the "terminal" stuff. It shouldn't depend on it though, one can imagine an useful x-installation without a terminal.
> There is one other 'association' issue that is getting worse. Imagine > selecting the gnome package suite. When I did this recently, I ended up > with more than *30* packages being selected for gnome support. Now > suppose the user wants to remove gnome to try out KDE, for example (lets > just assume they are mutually exclusive). There is no reasonable way > for this user to figure out which installed packages were installed for > gnome. I guess what I'm suggesting is that the packages need to > 'remember' *why* they were selected, by the user, or auto-selected > because of dependency requirements on a given package. When the user > goes to delete gnome from his system, the other packages that were > installed only because of dependencies, can 'inform' the user, somehow, > that they are no longer needed. An option for showing only those packages that nothing depends on could be useful. Or a flag for every installed package showing if there is dependencies. Helge Hafting
