Re: Back to RedHat

[David Engel <dlengel@home.com>]

On Fri, Sep 25, 1998 at 10:06:43AM +0200, Michael Meskes wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 24, 1998 at 08:47:06PM -0500, David Engel wrote:
> > The first idea is to have, for lack of a better name, super packages.
> > Super packages don't contain any files.  Instead, they only contain
> > dependencies on other packages.  The advantage is that the desired set
> > of packages can be changed by simply modifying the dependency list in
> > the super package.
> 
> So a super package would be a living preselection? 

Good description.  I like it.

> That is we add a dir
> preselections and for each preselection we like we put in a super package.
> Hey, I really like that. Sounds pretty good.

Yes.  I might even take this farther by having dselect/apt only show
super packages until the user enables an expert/see-all-packages mode.

On Fri, Sep 25, 1998 at 12:00:16PM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Sep 1998, David Engel wrote:
> > I disagree about pre-selections being a good system.  They are a
> > one-time only shortcut at initial installation.  
> 
> that's what it was designed to do.  it does that job reasonably well.
> 
> > They do nothing to help a non-expert/non-power user maintain a system
> > over time.
> 
> no, it's not designed to do that.  dselect and dpkg (and apt) are the
> correct tools for this job.

That was my point.  Pre-selections was a short-sighted and rather
limited solution to a bigger problem.

> > The first idea is to have, for lack of a better name, super packages.
> > Super packages don't contain any files.  Instead, they only contain
> > dependencies on other packages.  The advantage is that the desired set
> > of packages can be changed by simply modifying the dependency list in
> > the super package.
> 
> there used to be a package which did this. it was called 'chris-cust' or
> something like that. christoph lameter's preferred/standard selections.

chris-cust served a different, specific purpose.  Besides bringing in
Christoph's set of pet packages, I think it also performed some
personal customizations on them.  The intent of super packages is much
more general purpose.

David
-- 
David Engel
dlengel@home.com