Re: Back to RedHat
On Thu, 24 Sep 1998, David Engel wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 25, 1998 at 09:56:56AM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote:
> > the pre-selections thing allows you to select multiple sets. it's a
> > good system...the only reason i don't use it is that i have been using
> > dselect for years and prefer to (tediously and painstakingly) select
> > each individual package - that way i get exactly what i want, nothing
> > more and nothing less.
> >
> > i.e. the pre-selection thing is a short cut, dselect is more of a
> > "precision tool". :-)
>
> I disagree about pre-selections being a good system. They are a
> one-time only shortcut at initial installation.
that's what it was designed to do. it does that job reasonably well.
> They do nothing to help a non-expert/non-power user maintain a system
> over time.
no, it's not designed to do that. dselect and dpkg (and apt) are the
correct tools for this job.
> I like much better a couple of ideas I've mentioned before but have
> gone largely ignored.
>
> The first idea is to have, for lack of a better name, super packages.
> Super packages don't contain any files. Instead, they only contain
> dependencies on other packages. The advantage is that the desired set
> of packages can be changed by simply modifying the dependency list in
> the super package.
there used to be a package which did this. it was called 'chris-cust' or
something like that. christoph lameter's preferred/standard selections.
it's a good idea. i have my doubts about whether such packages are
suitable for inclusion in debian itself or not...but they can be very
useful to put in your own debian-local archive (especially if you
configure apt to use .../debian-local/ as well as debian main, contrib,
non-free, and non-us)
craig
--
craig sanders
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