Re: Dependencies of -dbg and -doc packages
Stephen Leake wrote:
Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote:
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 :).
Is it wrong to give people all of it? I may not be a
typical Ada programmer either, but as long as our definition
of a complete Ada development environment is sufficiently
small to fit in the resources of a typical (potential) Ada
developer, I prefer to get a bit too much, rather than a bit
too little.
If we somehow manage to make it trivial for people to find
and select the tools themselves, then such a package may not
be relevant anymore. But I would definitely like it to be a
one-liner, when I tell people how to install a Ada useful
development environment.
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.
Could we get Synaptic to list exact, case-sensitive debtags
matches higher than other search results?
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.
Maybe with an Ada example? ;-)
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?
Yes. Including handling of slightly different names in
different versions of Debian.
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.
Greetings,
Jacob
--
"Any politician with a live opposition does not understand
how to make proper use of the true instruments of politics."
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