Re: Every second year we are talking about a proper installer

[Ole Streicher <olebole@debian.org>]

Hi Andreas,

Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> writes:
> I wonder whether somebody who reads this list would volunteer to dive
> into the details of the installer or might be able to activate a
> volunteer with the necessary knowledge.

I forwarded your message to a volunteer, however he is new to Debian
(but enthusiastic ;-) ) ...

However, I also played a bit with tasksel and with science-tasks and
astro-tasks as two examples of the blends-tasks framework to see how
they actually work:

> sudo su -
$ apt install astro-tasks science-tasks
$ tasksel -t

The tasks are actually plainly added on top of the "software selection list"
without structure:

 Choose software to install:
    [ ] Debian Science Astronomy packages
    [ ] Debian Science Astronomy-dev packages
    [ ] Debian Science packages for the design and use of
    [ ] Debian Science Biology packages

Adding them on top is because they have a wrong relevance ("10"; should
be "9"), and the missing structure is because they don't have a parent
in /usr/share/tasksel/descs/debian-*-tasks.desc.

We could add one there for the whole blend -- this would group them
below that blend (as in the moment GNOME and Xfce are grouped below
"Desktop"):

    [ ] Debian Science Pure Blend
    [ ] ... Debian Science Astronomy packages
    [ ] ... Debian Science Astronomy-dev packages
    [ ] ... Debian Science packages for the design and use of

This shows a problem that needs some coordinated effort: The descriptions
are redundant, and this cannot be un-done in an automated way.

I would propose here the following: The short description of each
individual task in each individual blend *shall not* anymore name the
blend. So, from all tasks descriptions in debian-science, we should
remove the "Debian Science " prefix. And similar in all blends. I would
also remove the unneeded "packages" in debian-science descriptions
(that's trivial), but this is minor.

To not completely loose the connection to the blend in the sort
description, the blends names could be re-added in the *package* short
descriptions (but *not* in the tasks short descriptions) by the
blends-dev rules in an automated, conform way. For example (I take one
from debian-astro):

tasks/frameworks (currently) : "Astronomical data analysis frameworks"

tasks/frameworks (proposed)  : "Data analysis frameworks"
  --> debian-astro-tasks.desc: "Data analysis frameworks" 
  --> debian/control         : "Debian Astro: Data analysis frameworks"

However, this change would require some work for each individual blend;
otherwise the package descriptions would end up as ugly as
"Debian Science: Debian Science Astronomy-dev packages", so the
maintainer should somehow agree to do the work here.

And, this requires re-translation of the short descriptions. However, I
don't see another way to solve this.

Any thoughs? Ideas?

I would volunteer to do the changes in blends-dev (as long as my
know-how reaches here at least), in debian-science and debian-astro.

Best regards

Ole