Re: New version of master2files

["James R. Van Zandt" <jrv@vanzandt.mv.com>]

Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@debian.org> writes:
>A small question: when choosing tasks, the size of tasks is (and has always 
>been) meaningless since you can choose several tasks and some packages are 
>counted several times. Isn't it a problem?

Yes, it is something of a problem.  

We ought at least to explain this in the header, with something like
this:

	The size shown for each task is the sum of the sizes of its
	packages.  If you choose two tasks that share some packages,
	the actual disk requirement will be less than the sum of the
	sizes for the two tasks.

It would be nice to make the sizes of the packages available at run
time, and calculate the total disk requirement on the fly.  The size
of the /usr partition should be shown too, for reference.  (If you
have done a "custom" install of a Microsoft Office product, you have
seen this sort of display.)  Of course, not all files get installed
under /usr, and depending on how the disk is partitioned one might
like finer data.  I think apt is implementing a more sophisticated
algorithm.  However, this simple approximation would be a big help.

Here is another item for the wishlist: 

  Keep the one-line package description around for run time, so it
can be shown along with the package name when the user asks for
details on a profile or task.

		  - Jim Van Zandt