Re: better install disks
Robert de Bath wrote:
>
> > Does this make any sense to anyone?
> Some, but I don't think you go far enough.
>
> I've always believed that Suggests and especially Recommends are EVIL.
> A 'collection' would have a list of package names, possibly with
> substitutions (different packages that provide the same service),
> that are compared against the list of packages that are installed.
>
> If all (or most of) the packages in a collection are installed
> the collection can be assumed to be installed.
>
> (This could mean that the 'collections' installed don't have to be
> recorded but that would mean a complicated comparison to determine
> which collections may have been installed -- not a good idea)
>
> If there are "a few packages" missing a collection may be installed
> "less those packages".
>
> Collections may overlap, ie some packages get installed if either
> collection-A or collection-B are installed.
>
> There would probably be a need for 'stubs' - a couple of packages
> that need to be installed if some other collection is not installed.
>
> Individual packages can (of course) be installed as well as the collections.
>
> If you upgrade a collection, packages may be _automatically_ added,
> removed or replaced _easily_ within the collection. There would be an
> interesting interaction between 'Replaces:' and substitutions tho.
>
> As the final step, if you want to change the 'feel' of the distribution
> (Hacker, Developer, Server, Scientific, Office, Kids) or the type of
> machine it's for (Desktop, NetPC, Portable, Decapitated) you just change
> the basic set of installable collections. With these collections taking
> only a few _Kbytes_ you could change the focus of the distribution just
> by switching install floppies.
>
> Using one (or more) sets of these collections to drive the package layout
> onto CDs could be used to create "Debian-1cd" and other feinds.
>
> So, You've read this far ... what do you think ?
How is this functionally different from task-* packages that depend on
various packages and virtual packages? It seems a lot easier to
maintain multiple servers if I create a task-jpbserver that has
dependencies - the next time I 'apt-get update;apt-get upgrade' on one
of the servers apt will see that jpbserver's dependencies have changed
and grab the necessary debs.
Perhaps I'm just not seeing things clearly, but it seems that by not
having the collections depend on the various packages that are in them
we just create the need to write new code to deal with a special
collection type rather than use the existing dependency resolving code.
jpb
--
Joe Block <jpb@creol.ucf.edu>
CREOL System Administrator
Social graces are the packet headers of everyday life.
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