Re: New, Category, organization
From: Marco Mililotti <mililmar@lucy.dii.unisi.it>
Subject: New, Category, organization
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1999 22:55:41 +0000
> Hi to everyone :) Some days ago, in the debian-beowulf ML I proposed a new
> category in the debian package tree to host all the Beowulf software being
> offered within Debian. At present beowulf packages are around some dirs (such as
> 'devel' 'admin' ...). And if one of the objective of the category organization
> is to easy find out what is inside one category (say X11, Web, Admin and so on),
> it will be nice/useful/intelligent to put all that packages in only one place!
> Moreover I briefly follow discussions on the 'package pool proposal' (while not
> already subscribed...) and it will be a good idea to start thinking on this new
> category. Moreover, as I have realized beowulf clusters, it's frustating to find
> people that want to install others distros mainly because they have all the sw
> "easy" accessible (i.e. in only one path). I think Debian should start thinking
> on it.
There is a point here, for those interested in parallell computing it is
currently not very obvious which packages that belong to the group of packages
supporting it or not. There are clearly packages that would be better of
being placed into the 'parallell' group but on the same time there are several
cases of packages which migth be 'parallell enabled' but can work beutifully
on a single CPU box and no cluster fellow. Then there are those applications
that may have a single package (out of a suite of packages) that actually
relate to parallell computing where as others dont.
This situation is similar to what you see in the X/no-X support of various
packages.
There are packages which I beleive will still remain in their current positions
(like Savant) regardless of weither a group for parallell software exists or
not.
There is a danger in creating too many groups where as there is a drawback in
having too large groups. In a way it migth be considered advantageous to bring
up the parallell stuff to a defined group and taking the cost of creating a
new group. In doing that we make it easier to overview the parallell packages
as one installs the computer.
We must consider how we balance between group bloating and bloating of groups.
> However I hope that it will not be necessary to wait a lot (if possible, of
> course) to build a category in the Debian pack. tree. Potato is in freeze, as
> far as I know, and maybe it's to late to put there... or not???
Even if the packages themselfs will not change I do not think people are happy
to change things late. Just because it CAN be done it doesn't necessarilly
means that it SHOULD be done.
Cheers,
Magnus
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