Re: Creation of typical installations...
On Thu, 25 Sep 1997, Dale Scheetz wrote:
[--------much snipping-----------]
> Well, this is probably because I have not liked the idea of overlapping
> groups. The main reason I don't like it is that it maintains a degree of
> confusion for the new user, in much the same way (but potentially not to
> the same degree) that dselect now confuses new users with its volume of
> choices.
[--------much snipping-----------]
I remember when I first installed Slackware (long before Debian existed),
and it gave me a nice curses based list of categories of stuff (X,
development stuff, games...) and you could either install the whole darn
thing, or you could select individual components out of the various
categories. I installed RedHat on my swap partition once just to look at
it, and it did the same type of thing as Slackware... (This is a
great way to test out other distributions and their installs. Stick
on your swap partition, and then blow it away.) Red Hat and Caldera
both do the curses menu with categories thing, letting you select
components out of the categories. I recommend that all Debian developers
should try a minimal RedHat and/or Caldera install on their swap partition
to get a feel for how the other guys do it. There is a reason everybody
likes it. It is simple, painless, and it works.
We already _have_ some degree of categorization imposed by the structure
of the FTP sites. The quick and dirty hack would be to slap a simple
curses menu on top of a listing of the FTP site. That would at
least avoid the present dselect-shows-the-whole-thing-without-categories
problem. Then we could slam the selected packages through pkg-order to
see if they forgot something.
-Erik
--
Erik B. Andersen Web: http://www.inconnect.com/~andersen/
email: andersee@debian.org
--This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
On Thu, 25 Sep 1997, Dale Scheetz wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Sep 1997, David Engel wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Sep 25, 1997 at 09:27:59AM -0400, Dale Scheetz wrote:
> > > I would suggest that the best way to do this is with the status file.
> > > Create several status files, with the correct packages selected for
> > > installation, for each of the "installation catagories". During the
> > > installation process, allow the installer to select one. Copy the
> > > appropriate status file to /target/... . On the reboot, the installation
> >
> > One shortcoming of this approach is that it makes allowing overlapping
> > groups much more difficult. We would have to a different status file
> > for every possible combination of groups.
>
> Well, this is probably because I have not liked the idea of overlapping
> groups. The main reason I don't like it is that it maintains a degree of
> confusion for the new user, in much the same way (but potentially not to
> the same degree) that dselect now confuses new users with its volume of
> choices.
>
> Given our propensity for naming things in ways that confuse new users,
> having a list of "groups" to choose from could be as confusing as the
> current list of packages.
>
> >
> > Another shortcoming is that after initial installation, users would
> > still have to manually keep their systems up to date. If the group
> > info is in the control file for each package, dselect/deity could
> > automatically select new packages that are added to a group.
> >
> One of the major complaints I had about dselect when I first used it was
> the fact that it already had an idea of what it should install. Automatic
> selections criterion strikes me the same way. Personally I want to know
> what is being "added" to my system.
>
> On the other hand, on an upgrade it would be a simple matter to copy the
> "new" status file for your configuration into the dpkg database and then
> do the update. This would incorporate the "new" packages in that group
> into your system.
>
> One of the reasons I find this approach so intersting is that, if dpkg
> could be changed to be driven by the status file, instead of the archive,
> then it would be a simple matter of "ordering" the status file so that
> installation dependency order was correct. This would do away with all of
> the installation dependency problems we have now.
>
> Luck,
>
> 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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>
>
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