Re: Metapackages (was Re: Debian Weekly News - September 14th, 1999)

[Germano Leichsenring <germano@jedi.cs.kobe-u.ac.jp>]

>>>>> Joe Drew <hoserhead@woot.net> writes:

Joe> How is this different from metapackages? After all, all you have
Joe> to do is look at the metapackage's dependencies itself to see
Joe> what it gives you.

At the beginning they're not much different; if you consider the
metapackages implementation is already done, the keywords one is
much harder to do; but IMHO it looks simple to code, just some filters
on the "available" file. What happens is that with the keywords you can
join keywords, like (network && !admin && !docs).

I would say that, from a user's point of view, the keywords one looks more
useful for a "middle level" user, and better for fine-tuning the packages
when you don't know the name and can't realize in which group the package
you want is (and that happens a _lot_ with me).

Joe> I just don't see why there should be another keyword when it's
Joe> already working perfectly well.

I had the idea because I'm always grepping the "available" file, and thought
some keywords on it would be helpful and dpkg could even have a "search for
keywords" key. The list of packages is huge, you know that. I'm not sure
this problem will be solved with the metapackages; will it?

By the way, am I the only one grepping the "available" file??

-- 
Germano Leichsenring
  Kobe University