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Re: [IDEA]: extended task selecter for woody



On Thu, Mar 02, 2000 at 04:45:18PM +0100, Federico Di Gregorio was heard to say:
> Scavenging the mail folder uncovered Ben Collins's letter:
> > I'm not sure exactly what plans are held for woody. But I had a thought
> > for a simple extension to the task selecter. Basically it would allow you
> > to open a tree for each task and manually select/unselect each package
> > that the task depends on. If not all of the packages under a task are
> > selected, then the task package itself is not installed (just the selected
> > sub packages).
> > 
> > Thoughts, comments?
> 
> nice. but i would better see one of the apt front-ends (aptitude, capt)
> modified to show only the task packages on request. (btw, about 1.5 years
> ago i proposed to add a "level" keyword to the packages. level 0 are
> libraries or packages that you want to install onl because of dependencies,
> level 1 are normal packages and level 2 are meta-packages [our tasks.]
> you can even add more levels and modify the front ends to show you just
> the levels you want...)

  aptitude can already do this by setting the display limit to "~ntask-" or just
"task-".  Hmm..(thinks) this may be only in the CVS version, I think the last
release crashed when you tried to limit on names.  Anyway, by the time woody
is out (2001, 2002, ...) I'll probably have released at least one more
version :-)

  As to this suggestion..it's ok, but I think the real problem with task
packages is that it's so hard to get rid of everything associated with one,
especially if you've deselected some of its dependencies.
  I think it might be useful to add explicit knowledge of "components" to the
package system: packages which are "part of" another package and may be
automatically selected for installation when it is, but also can be installed or
removed independently of it and which are always marked for deinstallation when
it is (although you could, of course, override this)  I can't think of any way
to fudge the current dependencies to produce this effect; refcounting of
packages might help a little..

  Daniel

-- 
"Do you know why the prisoner in the tower watches the flight of birds?"
  -- Terry Pratchett, _Reaper_Man_


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