John Pearson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [objections for auto-installing Debian packages when a user types a > command from a package that has not yet been installed. One of the > objections is, that package installation ought to be a task of the > manager of the computer system and not of an ordinary user]
I can imagine another philosophy for automatic package installing. I am sure that many people (I myself for instance) have installed many more packages than they actually use. For that case I can imagine a utility that remembers for each package the latest occasion that it has actually been used, and removes the package if it has not been used for a specific time. Then, if a user asks for that package, the utility re-installs the package from the deb file. In this way the system maintainer keeps control on what is installed, what is installable and what is not installed and the system is as mean and lean as possible. On the other hand, I presume that it is very complicated to write a program that tracks the actual use of each installed debian package. Paul Huygen
