Re: Proposal: dump dselect for console-apt

[Adam Di Carlo <adam@onshore.com>]

Matt Porter <mmporter@home.com> writes:

> My recommendation only applies to what is launched after the task
> management GUI.  In non-expert mode, I don't think anything should be
> launched since it just complicates matters. The new user will just select
> "Home Computer" and when it is finished it will kick them out to the login
> prompt.

I agree with this sentiment.  A large flaw in the old system was that
the user had to pick selections, and *then* go into dselect, just do
'configure', 'update', and 'install', avoiding 'select'.  Ick!

> The advanced user will select an option that will kick them out
> to console-apt so they can search around and add a few more individual
> packages to their liking.

Or dselect ....  This talk of console-apt right now is pure vapor,
isn't it?  I'm interested in what can be done in the next 5 weeks, not
next 5 months.

> > The following excerpt from an installation script demonstrates how
> > useful it really is, at least for me;
> > 
> >    dpkg --clear-avail
> >    apt-get update
> >    dselect update
> >    dpkg --set-selections < ./selections-base
> >    dselect remove
> >    apt-get upgrade
> >    dselect install
> >    dpkg --set-selections < ./selections-addons
> >    dselect install

Many of these capabilities I never realized dselect had.  I actually
know lots of people (old RedHat users) who are new to Debian who use
dselect and like it.

Anyhow, I wonder if it would be possible to ship dselect in base
already configured to use the apt acquisition method....

> These capablities should be moved to apt since it is the next gen.  I'd
> imagine by the next (post potato) release dselect should be gone.

Maybe, maybe not.  In the context of the boot-floppies group, our job
is to do the best we can with what the distro is giving us.  If it
gives us a rockin' console-apt which everyone agrees is better, then
we would replace dselect with it (if it was small enuf).

Until then, it's not really an interesting issue to me...

-- 
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>