Possible solution to custom installations.

[Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>]

There has been discussion in the past, both here and on debian-user, about
providing a method, either with dselect or some other way, that could
allow easy installation of a specific package set that would allow a
system to be built for a particular task without having to "know"
anything. Such suggestions have included: Simple non-network work station;
Simple network work station; News server; Mail server; Your idea goes
here.
It dawned on me the other day that there is a really simple way to deal
with this and it doesn't require changing dselect. Here's the idea:

At the outer level of the distribution tree create directories like: SWS
for simple work station, NWS for networked work station, etc... The names
could probably use a little work, but that isn't critical to the idea.
Each of these directories would have links to the actual package files
elsewhere in the distribution. The simple work station directory would
have links to only those packages that are desirable for such a system
configuration along with a Packages file that contained only those
packages. This would not cost much disk space and would allow for easy
installation of such a system with dselect. One would simply point to this
directory in the [A]ccess phase (and only this directory) and then 
[S]elect All Packages after [U]date ing the available file. All the
dependencies could be ironed out in testing and could result in a "simple"
installation path for the "usual" kinds of setup. I think that it might be
possible to provide a "response" file that would "do the right thing" and
let the installer go to lunch while the system was built.

Have I missed something, or will this really work?

Waiting is,

Dwarf
-- 
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aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 656-9769
      Flexible Software              11000 McCrackin Road
      e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net     Tallahassee, FL  32308

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