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Re: Debian Games Pure Blend



Hi,

On 01.08.2014 14:54, Andreas Tille wrote:
> Hi Markus,
> 
> thanks a lot for this attempt which I consider a nice step forward to
> make games in Debian even more easy to install for users and -- what's
> IMHO even more important -- visible inside Debian. 

You're welcome. That's also my vision. :)

> I just imagine bold
> lines of news tickers like "Debian now supports games" when Debian Games
> is mentioned in the Jessie release notes. :-)  While we all know that
> Debian had games quite from the beginning it could help to get Debian
> out of the "servers only corner".

I agree that there should be at least a few lines in the release notes.

> When speaking about this I would like to restart the "noise about
> initial tasksel" we did years ago in #186085 which was closed without
> beeing fixed.  I could imagine an initial Blends menu in the installer
> where you can select your favourite Blend(s) metapackages.
> 
> What do you think?

Absolutely agreed. A submenu for blends would be a useful addition to
tasksel. At the moment the $blend-tasks package already installs a .desc
file to /usr/share/tasksel so that users can pick one of the blends'
tasks. A submenu or simply another page after the standard tasks would
then surely improve the visibility of blends. I think I would go for an
extra page that looks like that

Debian Pure Blends

$blend1
------
Description

task 1 []
task 2 []
.
.

$blend2
Description

task 1 []
task 2 []
.
.

[...]
> Technical hint:  You cen (and should) also mention packages from
> non-free safely.  The metapackage creation procedure of blends-dev is
> checking packages in main/testing and degrades everything not listed
> there (packages only in unstable, or in non-free or just in preparation
> in VCS) to Suggests which in any case results in valid metapackages (at
> the given point in time).  So I explicitly encourage to add also
> packages not (yet) in main to the tasks.

I have decided to focus on main for various reasons but not because of
technical aspects. Actually I really like the current feature that
contrib/non-free packages or packages which are not in testing are
automatically downgraded to "Suggests". So I don't want to blame the
blends framework.

I want to focus on main because I'd like to convey the message that main
is Debian and it's good to have your games there if they should be
promoted. We also have to draw a line somewhere otherwise I can already
see the first requests to add "Humble Bundle" or Steam games to the list
and that's not the route I want to go with this Blend.

[...]
> What about tasks games-kde, games-gnome or do these metapackages exist
> basically as kde-games, gnome-games resp. I do not use these so my
> suggestion might be naive.

Indeed kdegames and gnome-games exist already and I didn't want to
duplicate our efforts in this regard.

>> At the moment I'm thinking about the next steps. I feel I'm more
>> interested in learning how to create a Debian Live DVD/usb stick for
>> games, so I think this could be the next goal.
> 
> I'd suggest the next step should be uploading the metapackages to new.

*nod* I thought it would be useful and decided to create another task,
"finest-light" that includes only games from "finest" with low hardware
requirements. This should also be helpful for creating a live image
which would basically be games-finest-light + some extra games and packages.

> Once they arrived in the Debian pool you can use live-build and just add
> the metapackages to the dependency list which should be basically whyt
> cou need to do.  If you do so I'd (strongly) recommend you commit all
> the live-build into the repository[2].  Disclaimer:  I never built any
> live media but I have heard live-build would be the way to go - please
> correct me if I'm wrong.  Having an example in a repository would be
> really helpful for other Blends.

I will take a look at the efforts mentioned here soon:

https://wiki.debian.org/Games/Live

and ask questions if they should arise.

Another point:

How can I enable the bug page and the "thermometer" for the Games Blend?

Regards,

Markus





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