Re: Packaging WM themes - question
On Fri, 25 May 2001, Ben Burton wrote:
> > Although best would be a KDE-theme installer. Are the themes
> > available individually anywhere, in a format consistent enough for
> > automating the debianization and installation?
>
> By this do you mean an empty debian package whose configuration procedure is
> to download themes and install them on the fly?
...or a packaged program that does for KDE-themes what apt-get does
for Debian (kinda like what the Perl maintainers have done with CPAN).
> The themes are available on the web in a format that's very easily
> debianised/installed. However, the connection between my machine and the
> Russian server is quite flaky, and I recall the author saying the problem was
> at his/her end (although for the life of me I can't find the email). Thus I
> would be happier for the themes to be in debian per se. :)
Hmmm, OK. Maybe he needs a mirror.
I'm one of those people running KDE on a small system, a very small
and slow system (about a gig of hdd space and connecting at
28.8kbps)...
Huge packages can be a major pain because they take a long time to
download (feels worse if I really only want a small piece of the
package), and I may need to make room just to download them
(especially if they come along with the daily system upgrade).
The dpkg/apt DB overhead is almost inconsequential (about 25M, ~2% of
my hdd space, and I'm tracking testing/unstable/source). I have used
a system so small that 25M was too much overhead, but then I didn't
even use dselect (would not have used apt) and ignored any "huge-arse"
packages of `toy' stuff -- but as long as I had enough room to
download a .deb, and it fit onto a floppy, I could install it.
If you do one huge package you will be more likely to leave out people
with small systems than if you do a bunch of small packages.
If the DB overhead of lots of packages is too much for users with
small systems they will likely find a way around it. e.g.,
(packages.debian.org --> download --> "dpkg -i..."), or keeping on
top of the caches and backups and only tracking what they need to.
If the total number of packages is overwhelming... tough, but that is
a programming problem (devise a better interface to the package pool)
and should not be solved by limiting options.
- Bruce
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