Re: Dependencies of -dbg and -doc packages
Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> writes:
> Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote:
>> 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".
>>
>>>> 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?
>
> There is a virtual package "ada-compiler" provided by gnat;
> from there they should follow the reverse dependencies.
> Granted, that may not be as obvious as it could be.
Currently, synaptic gives an empty list when searching for "ada-compiler
dependencies". So for that to work, all Ada packages should Suggest
ada-compiler. That might be better than Suggest gnat.
>>> Note: there is a fourth answer: use debtags. This is
>>> available both in aptitude and in synaptic; but it
>>> requires brave souls to add tags to each package and
>>> that's not done in the debian/control files but externally
>>> in a tags database.
>>
>> How do the users benefit from debtags? Does Synaptic give
>> search results with matching debtags higher priority than
>> those with matching descriptions?
>
> You search either by browsing the trees OR by looking for keywords
> OR by looking for a set of debtags. There is no priority involved;
> you get a different result set for each query.
I see no way to get synaptic to search for "debtags". I guess aptitude
supports that?
Searching the synaptic help for 'debtags' says 'keywords' are the same
thing. But the instructions given for searching on keywords don't work;
that part of the GUI isn't present. Installing debtags and restarting
synaptic didn't help.
So debtags is not something we can expect newcomers to use.
>>>> 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?
>
> Yes; I think I'll try to implement your suggestion when I
> get around to it. The problem is that this meta-package
> would require maintenance.
How will you decide what to include in it?
--
-- Stephe
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