Re: package pre-selections tool

[Anderson MacKay <iris@oceania.tnn.net>]

Yann Dirson writes:
 > Adam P. Harris writes:
 >  > Here's my suggestions for the prerolled configurations:
 >  > 
 >  > * basic (stripped down, minimal) configuration:
 >  > * minimal X11 (laptop) configuration:
 >  > * full user X11 standalone
 >  > * full developer box
 > 
 > * Intranet server:
 > MTA, WWW server, maybe others ?

And the nice thing about this "tool" is that we have complete control over what
gets installed when ... (if we so desire :) If we were to make it like some
other operating systems' installs, we could have a couple options:
	a) Basic install -- the console-only 40M option listed somewhere
                 previously 
	b) A preconfigured custom install as listed above ... minimal laptop,
		full X11, full developer, intranet server, database server
		(throw Postgres on there with some "post-config scripts" <after
		our custom install, that is> to make it easy to set up DBs
		...), file server (again, with "post-config" scripts to do
		user-friendly setup on NFS, Samba, and with a pre-installed,
		easily-configurable mass backup option) ... you get the
		picture.  Basically, if this is someone who's best experience
		is installing NT or Win95, at least hide the complexity in the
		beginning.  They'll have to learn sometime, but why turn them
		off on the install? 
	c) An "advanced" custom install (drop 'em into dselect or Apt)

For a) and b), we could simply run dpkg on the packages we want, in the order
we want, and not have to worry about run-time dependency calculations.  Simply
have a script with an order that "we know this works" and go with that.  After
getting a base install or preconfigured custom install, *then* drop them into
dselect to further customize the install.  This is AFAIK what happens with the
libc5-libc6 update shell script -- maybe a good model (functionally, anyway)
for this tool.

Andy

PS And no, I don't have time to write this right now, although I have been
pondering the idea.


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