Gustavo Franco blogged:
> In Ubuntu there' s ubuntu-meta source package that results in
> [ubuntu-minimal][1], [ubuntu-standard][2] and [ubuntu-desktop][3]. They're
> metapackages and the list of packages is built with a tool called germinate
> based on a seed in the web. I've a [branch of cjwatson' ubuntu seed][4] and
> asked him to upload [germinate][5] in Debian, he did! To avoid confusion, i've
> renamed "our ubuntu-meta" to utnubu-meta and it will be included in [utnubu
> alioth group ][6]in svn soon.
I've very confused by the approach you are taking here. Debian already
has its own way to install a desktop, namely tasksel's desktop tasks.
Any help with maintaining that would be appreciated; but introducing a
competing thing taken from Ubuntu into Debian doesn't seem at all
helpful from my perspective, unless I've misunderstood what you're
doing.
This seems to be a metapackage that depends on 239 packages[3]. Debian
has already rejected using large metapackages such as that for many
reasons, including:
* The way they clog up britney by tying a lot of otherwise unrelated
packages together. (As a sometime member of the release team, I feel
like I'm in the shower seeing the shadow of a figure with a knife.)
* Their general fragility, breaking if any one semi-unimportant package
in the metapackage is removed from testing for any reason, or is
unavailable for any one architecture for any reason.
* Their all or nothing nature making it a pain to put them onto CDs,
if any one semi-unimportant package doesn't fit the whole metapackage
won't go on.
* Their lack of a clean way to remove the metapackage (semi-addressed by
aptitude).
We tried it, it doesn't work for us[4]. I still have the scars. Tasksel
avoids all of these problems. If you are interested in maintaining
tasksel's desktop or other tasks, that could be arranged.
--
see shy jo
[3] http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/base/ubuntu-desktop
[4] As to why tasksel doesn't work for Ubuntu, Colin Watson has told me
before that it's because when they did their first release, it was
before I had rewritten tasksel 2.x; tasksel 1.x didn't meet their
needs and there's apparently no "Naibed" project in Ubuntu to go back
and take the good stuff from Debian and feed it into Ubuntu in this
case. ;-) Ah, the joy of forks.
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