Re: Priorities
Anthony Towns wrote:
> I don't really understand task packages. I'd assume that they're there
> to make it easy for people to do some particular common tasks (setup a
> desktop environment, interact with your computer in japanese, play music,
> do 3d graphics, program).
Right. Have you done a potato install ever? This should be fairly clear
if so..
> It seems to me like it might be bing abused somewhat as an excuse to
> advertise particular groups of packages. task-webserver-roxen, and
> task-x-window-system come to mind as being more an excuse to group a
> bunch of packages together than really focussing on being something
> useful for the prospective user, for example. OTOH, "I want a useful X
> environment" isn't an unreasonable task.
Yes, task-webserver-roxen should not exist. I have written about this
before. "I want a web server" is a suitable task, "I want web server
foo" is not.
> The *task* is really "usable 2d windowing environment for accessing
> programs", it's not kde, or gnome, or xlib, or motif. Is it really
> sensible to have the choice between the various windowing toolkits
> made here? Would it be better/possible to have a task-desktop that
> included both gnome and kde, and the best apps from both, and just let
> the user use them? Obviously the packager would have to make a choice
> amongst xdm, gdm and kdm, but that doesn't seem unreasonably difficult.
Yes, probably. Remember, task packages arn't about choice, or rather
they are about us making choices so a new user doesn't have to bother.
> python
> - how do I know whether I'm going to write "complicated" apps or not?
> gnome-games
> - i just want to play games, i don't care what toolkit they use
> tcltk
> - how do i kow if i want to run tcltk programs? debian packages will
> install it if they need it, presumably the lsb will do likewise,
> and anything i buy will tell me what i need to install, surely?
> debug
> - if I'm going to be programming, I'm probably going to be debugging.
> if I'm not programming why would i be debugging?
> devel-common
> - C and C++ and Objective C are already covered with the specific
> tasks, what's the point?
> doc
> - eh?? i have to go out of my way to get "General documentation"??
> python-web
> - a general "i want to work on interactive web sites" task would make
> sense to me (one that included, presumably, a free java, and zope,
> and tomcat, and tools to do cgi in perl and python and whatever else)
> but just for pythn? "apt-get install zope" if that's what you want.
I think I agree with all of these. We should file bugs to get them
removed.
> The following seem to be just random collections of packages:
>
> python-bundle
> x-window-system
> gnome-apps
> gnome-net
I'm not sure aboyt task-x-window-system, but most of these have no
business using the task- prefix.
> a) There are a bunch of task- packages that aren't really useful.
>
> b) We can probably split tasks into three areas:
>
> * Install enough packages to satisfy most people who might
> say "I want to do <..> with my computer"
>
> * Help someone set up some complicated service
It doesn't have to be a complicated service. This is just another
instance of "I want to do foo with my computer", where foo is web
servering or dns serving, or firewalling, or whatever.
> * Help someone make use of some hardware they have attached
> to their computer, in a fairly generic way.
>
> I don't see any *good* reason for task- packages to conflict, though,
> in the above, most task packages should be completely independent.
Task packages should never conflict.
--
see shy jo
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