Re: install report for Debian 2.1 and some comments on installation profiles

[Adam Di Carlo <adam@onshore.com>]

[Talking about tasks and profile from boot-floppies] 

>>>>> "brandon" == Brandon Mitchell <bmitch@atdot.org> writes:
brandon> I'd personally like to see a way to easily add a profile via
brandon> dpkg -get-selections and make for a cookie cutter install
brandon> (think large labs).

Eh... I don't see this as a good idea.  I personally would rather see
all the "tasks" made into "metapackages" (packages which are basically
just a bunch of dependancies, and some info in /usr/doc/).

Then you can maintain your tasks and profiles all the time.

Also, tasks would be task-<taskname> metapackages, depending on actual
Debian packages.  Profiles would be profile-<profilename>
metapacakges, depend on just the tasks.

Voila.  Elegant, uses the existing packaging system (i.e., no need to
skip the select step in dselect), simple, and, really, it has little
to do with the boot-floppies at all.  Although, the existing GUI could
be changed a bit so it just installs these metapackages, rather than
the actual packages themselves.  Furthermore, users who are upgrading
or whatever can take advantage of tasks and profiles, rather than just
those who are using the boot-floppies.

Furthermore, the harmony between the tasks/profiles and the archives
themselves can be tested by apt itself. (This was a big issue in slink
release, and it kept breaking).

I would love to see this happen but I don't have time.  It's not
really all that simple, since dependancies can vary by architecture.

Stephane Bortzmeyer, the current maintainer of tasks and profiles,
hasn't really weighed in -- Stephane, would you be amenable to this
plan?  Is it good?  Bad?

Another nice benefit to my scheme is that each task/profile can be
maintained independantly by different Debian developers.  In fact, I
volunteer to take over the SGML environment task if we do move to this
scheme.

So -- lets have a little discussion period, and then decide, and
perhaps start looking for volunteers.  We need to jump on this quick
so we can have it in place for freeze time, whenever that is.

--
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>