Re: Dependencies of -dbg and -doc packages
Jacob Sparre Andersen <jacob@jacob-sparre.dk> writes:
> Ludovic Brenta wrote:
>> Stephen Leake wrote:
>
>>> [...] "how does someone new to Debian discover all the Ada packages
>>> that are available".
>
> And "how can he/she easily install a complete Ada development
> environment".
There is no single answer to that question. Just choosing between GPS
and Emacs is not simple. "install a basic Ada developmenent environment"
is accomplished by "aptitude install gnat". But "complete" depends
heavily on what you are doing. Do you need OpenToken (for writing
mini-languages), or libgtk (for writing GUIs) or libasis (for writing
source-parsing tools)? I happen to have all of those installed, but I am
_not_ typical :).
>>> The answer could be the same, or it could be "run the aptitude
>>> character based GUI, and type some obsure commands", or it could be
>>> "run the Synaptic modern GUI, use the buttons to search for gnat in
>>> dependencies'".
>>>
>>> The latter seems likely to be the closest to the "typical" modern
>>> user's expectations, except that they will be more likely to try
>>> searching for "Ada" in "description and name" first, and get _lots_
>>> of false positives (that's what I just did :).
>
> I think we should expect people to search for "Ada". How can we help
> them get most out of that query?
Delete all other packages that have the "ada" in the name. Not going to
happen.
Synaptic automatically lowercases the search string, I assume to get
case-independent searching.
>>> The Synaptic search requires use of a rodent-like attachment :),
>>> gives some false positives, and leaves out libopentoken-dbg (I'm
>>> not clear why).
>>
>> That's why I think that ensuring that all Ada packages are linked
>> with one another in some sensible way would be a big help.
>
> I don't think I ever used dependency browsing as a way to find Ada
> packages.
Neither did I, until now. That's why we need a FAQ.
Maybe there is currently a Debian FAQ with hints about how to find
packages; we could add to that as well.
http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-software.en.html does not
reference synaptic; it talks about searching text files with lists of
package names. Definitely needs improving.
>>> Now we are talking about a different problem; how to install
>>> packages once we find out about them.
>>
>> I'd like this to be as immediate as possible; there should not be
>> separate commands.
>
> Wouldn't my suggestion of a dummy "Ada developer's complete toolbox"
> package solve this?
No. To be truly "complete", it would have to install absolutely every
package turned up the search for "all Ada packages". That would be way
overkill. And there is no way to agree on what "complete" means short of
that.
>>> I doubt _any_ user will want to simply install "everything that
>>> uses Ada". I expect them to browse the list, decide to install a
>>> couple of packages to start with, and type:
>>>
>>> aptitude install libopentoken-dev libgnadesqlite-dev
>>>
>>> or just click on the check boxes in Synaptic.
>
> I find that process so annoying, so I have created an awful hack,
> which installs all the Ada packages I know of in one step.
I assume that's a shell script with a list of 'apt-get install'
commands?
That's not an "awful hack". I have similar lists of things to install on
a new box. It's the right way to get the environment you want.
For recreating your development environment on a new box, using Synaptic
is a pain.
But for a newcomer, or an experienced developer starting a new project
that needs new tools, synaptic is a good approach.
For example, that's how I found apt-rdepends; I used synaptic to search
for "apt" in package names (and waded thru lots of false positives).
An option to do a recursive Depends search on libapt would have produced
fewer false positives. But 'apt-rdepends -r libapt-pkg-libc6.9-6-4.8'
gives a _lot_ of packages to search thru; apparently people have written
a lot of tools to support the install process; we are not alone here!
--
-- Stephe
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