Re: Handling Typical Installations
David Engel <david@sw.ods.com> writes:
> I just had a (brilliant, IMNSHO :-) idea on how we can easily handle
> typical installations and not require any changes to dpkg/dselect.
>
> We simply create a new section (let's call it "typical" for now) and
> populate it with dummy packages that don't contain any files but
> depend on the desired set of real packages. For example, we could
> have a "c-devel" package which depends on binutils, gcc and libc6-dev,
> or a "web-server" package which depends on apache and whatever else is
> needed. This approach has the additional advantage that dependencies
> for new packages could be easily added to the dummy packages and they
> would be automatically selected the next time the user upgrades.
>
> As stated before, this approach doesn't require any changes to
> dselect. However, we might want to make a few minor changes anyway.
> One example would be to give "typical" packages preferential treatment
> like making sure they are listed first when dselect is run the first
> time.
>
> What do y'all think?
Your idea is reasonable and good, but I tihnk it misses the point of
haveing a typical installation available real easy. It's still a great
idea and please keep the idea alife.
The Problem with your Idea, as i see it, is that it uses deselect. For
a typical easy installation the user might not want to read trough the
pages of help needed to use dselect. A Menudriven (like the install
menu) setup would be much easier to understand and use. The user could
place tags to the groups he would like and then hit install at the
bottom. Groups could be :
'Requiered x MB' (allways selected)
'Most x Mb' (As much as work without conflicts and is reasonable for a home system.)
'X x MB' (giveing a submenu to select the XServer on some architectures)
'gcc x MB'
'www/news/mail Browser x Mb' (There are so many, maybe its not a good idea)
.....
Most would also toggle all other groups.
There should not be to many groups or to many choices. People how need
more choice should use dselect (maybe with your idea in it). This
method should only be for first time installation of some basic thinks
the user would otherwise have to find manually in dselect (which is
hard to use first time).
May the Source be with you.
Mrvn
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