Source: blends Version: 0.6.94 Severity: serious Tags: d-i Justification: Policy 2.5 and breaking another package Hi, I'm sorry, but the current implementation of installing Blends from Debian images is simply not acceptable, as in, it completely breaks the UI of debian-installer thus the severity. (It's also an unacceptable policy violation, see below.) For those wondering what the current implementation looks like, have a look at https://lists.debian.org/debian-blends/2016/05/pngVVl6XLXLxZ.png In words: several blends have been added to the tasksel menu (the one which asks which tasks should be installed, "default", "standard", "desktop", "ssh-server", etc.) The ascii version of the above linked screenshot looks like this: --begin-- At the moment, only the core of the system is installed. To tune the system to your needs, you can choose to install one or more of the following predefined collections of software. Choon software to install.' o webserver _ 0 printserver O SSHserver 0 standard system utilities O Debian Pure Blends o Deb; O. DebianEdu O. DebianEzGa O. DebianGames O. DebianGIS O. Hamradia O. DebianJunior O. DebianMed O. DebianMultimedia O ... Debian Science -- end -- This aint acceptable for a debian-installer for the reasons laid out in #758116. Look for those two mails from bubulle in that bug, they explain very well, that+why the current implementation is a *no go*: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=758116#320 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=758116#340 Technically this was implemented by setting the binary package blends-tasks to prio: important, which needs to be reverted to fix the current tasksel mess. Also, setting blends-tasks to priority:important is a policy violation, please read https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-priorities - packages with priority:important are installed by default, and there is *no* need (as it doesnt make sense, it's not useful) to have blends-tasks installed by default on each and every Debian system. (I'm sorry if describing https://lists.debian.org/debian-blends/2016/05/pngVVl6XLXLxZ.png as a mess hurts some people. I dont know a better way to put it.) So how to fix this *and* allow Debian blends be installed easily from official Debian media? My idea to implement official Debian which can be used to install blends is to introduce "flavors" (or spins or whatever, just a new term, to not overload old ones), which basically are themed netinstall images. For illustration, these are some netinstall image _flavors_/_spins_ I have in mind: debian-classic / textmode d-i debian-graphical installer blends selection (graphical) debian-edu blend (graphical) debian-parl blend (graphical) debian-speakup (textmode d-i with speech enabled by default) … The idea is, that these images have the *same features* (and packages), the differences are just which the preselected default in the boot menu. So they all have the same boot menu too, and it's possible to install each and every flavor by manually choosing a different boot menu. This has several benefits: - it's possible to tell people "download $this iso to install $this type of Debian" - without giving them congnitive stress by presenting them choices they dont understand - the boot menu is also not translatetable, so having choices there wont help many users. - this can be implemented for stretch. Major changes (especially ones requiring translations) are not likely to happen anymore, so this is one way to have official Debian blends images *at all*. (As said, the current implementation is not acceptable.) - the current implementation is also useless for Debian Edu and at least very inconvinient for other "non-standalone" blends (those who also need the desktop task to be installed), not all blends are self contained. Debian Edu OTOH is blend which comes in several variations. (see https://jenkins.debian.net/userContent/debian-edu-doc/debian-edu-doc-en/debian-edu-stretch-manual-images/08-Choose_Debian_Edu_profile.png to understand that "one type of Debian Edu installs" is not enough.) The actual implementation of this will need to be done in debian-cd.git where the boot menu for netinst images is definied. For debian-edu it's probably enough to add a commandline parameter like this: preseed/early_command="anna-install debian-edu-profile-udeb" For blends-tasks it's probably enough to add a commandline parameter like this: preseed/late_command="apt install -y blends-tasks" (or probably better to turn blends-tasks into an udeb…) To track and implement this, I will clone this bug and reassign the clone to debian-cd (and then maybe file some more for some blends I care about). Actually, no, I will file a new bug using only half of the text of this bug :) I also plan to NMU blends-dev to set blends-tasks back to priority:optional, probably on Thursday or Friday this week. (To give some time to discussion, but soon, to not let this slip for to long.) - and I'll make this change in blends-dev.git right away. -- cheers, Holger
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