Re: new Debian user's thoughts on Debian installation
On Sun, Oct 15, 2000 at 01:37:03PM -0400, E. Jay Berkenbilt wrote:
> there seems to be no way to automatically get the -dev package
> corresponding to a runtime package (maybe a bad thing?).
Yeah, it's not automatic... but it's not really hard to find them, either,
they're mostly named libfoo-dev of libfooX-dev (where X is the major number
from the SONAME). Try something like dpkg -l 'lib*' | grep ^.i | awk '{print $2}'
> What would work for me would be to always get the packages required to
> BUILD anything I choose to install, and to always get the -dev packages
> corresponding a runtime package.
This is being implemented, using a package field called Build-Depends (and
Build-Depends-Indep). The tools (such as dpkg-buildpackage (try apt-get
source -b foo (parenthesis are cool :) ))) don't support it quite well yet,
but it's being worked on.
> I use openssh which doesn't seem to exist even in the non-US area
> (unless I just missed it).
It's called `ssh'. The old non-free SSH is in the `ssh-nonfree' package.
> With rpm, you can generate multiple binary packages from one source
> package. I don't know whether Debian packages work like this as well.
Of course.
> if the "task-*" were presented before their components even in dselect, it
> would probably be a good sign that things were working well. (While going
> through devel, I started selecting autoconf, automake, etc. only to
> finally get to the t's and see task-c++-dev and task-debian-devel which
> required most of what I had already selected.)
NB Try tasksel, it'll show you only the task packages, like it did on the
initial installation.
> My casual reading of the packaging-manual seemed to suggest that it is up
> to the packager to state how much space their package takes installed.
In theory; in practice, the calculation is completely automated.
> To the Debian installation system's credit, once the installation process
> was finished, I had to do less customization
Actually, this isn't due to the install system itself, it's the individual
packages that provide sensible default configuration files.
--
Digital Electronic Being Intended for Assassination and Nullification
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