work needed for woody release: rationally looking at task pkgs
I wish we would take a look at the task packages and fix them up.
Anyone can help with this process, which would significantly improve
the experience for new users. All you have to do is run 'tasksel' and
play around with it. For extra creds, on a base-only system
(debootstrap can build one for you, and you can chroot into it),
install the tasks, then play around with what the task packages get
installed, what is lacking, etc.
I'm really just throwing this out there, because I think it's
important for woody release. People should look at this, file bugs,
seeks out tasks not created and create them, etc.
What is a task package? I conceive of it as a simple convenience
mechanism for helping avoid dselect and pick a reasonable set of
packages based on
a use that the user wants to make of their system
In other words, 'task-c++-dev' means: "I want to do C++ development on
this system". It should grab the compiler, baseline libs for
development, debugger and other C++ debugging aids, even an IDE (emacs
is acceptable!). (Note: task-c++-dev does little of this).
Remember that 'depends' is all anyone *really* cares about.
Remember that tasks are primarily for new users installing the system,
and only as a very far second, IMHO, to ongoing users.
One of my big big problems is how little of the 5000 or 6000 packages
that Debian has is covered by task packages. It's better to get too
much (disk is cheap, tasks can be removed) than too little.
I propose the following thorough-going changes:
rename server packages to 'task-server-*'
rename devel packages to 'task-devel-*'
rename l10n packages to 'task-l10n-*'
The purpose of this is to group like packages together in tasksel.
Other stuff:
Why no 'task-desktop-gnome' and 'task-desktop-kde' ?
Why no 'task-web-appserver' (which could include apache, mod_perl and
other commonly used stuff).
None of the tasks grab in common desktop stuff which a newbie,
non-hacker user would expect, such as a nice web browser, some simple
productivity apps, gimp, stuff to fiddle and play with...
I really have absolutely no time to work on this, so I'm just throwing
it out there. I am not on debian-devel, so please CC me if you really
need my thoughts...
All of this is MHO.
And remember again I have no real time to do anything about this --
you guys will have to pick up the slack if you want to....
--
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onshore.com.....<URL:http://www.onshored.com/>
task-c++-dev - Development in C++
task-c-dev - Development in C
task-cyrillic - Cyrillic environment
task-database-pg - PostgreSQL database
task-debian-devel - Debian package development
task-debug - Debugging of C, C++, Objective C and friends
task-devel-common - Development in various languages
task-dialup - Dialup utilities
task-dialup-isdn - Dialup utilities (ISDN)
task-doc - General documentation
task-dns-server - DNS Server
task-fortran - Fortran development environment
task-games - A selection of games
task-german - German-speaking environment
task-harden - Harden your system
task-imap - IMAP Server
task-japanese - Japanese environment
task-junior - The base install for a Debian Jr. system
task-newbie-help - New user documentation
task-news-server - USENET News Server
task-objc-dev - Development in Objective C
task-parallel-computing-dev - Packages for development of parallel computing applications
task-parallel-computing-node - Libraries for parallel computing applications
task-polish - Polish-speaking environment
task-python - Python script development environment
task-python-bundle - Full distribution of Python
task-python-dev - Full Python development environment
task-python-web - Python web application development environment
task-samba - Samba SMB server
task-science - Packages for numerical computing, data analysis and visualization
task-sgml-dev - SGML and XML development environment
task-sgml - SGML and XML authoring and editing
task-spanish - Spanish environment
task-tcltk - Running Tcl/Tk applications
task-tcltk-dev - Developing Tcl/Tk applications
task-tex - TeX/LaTeX environment
task-x-window-system - X Window System (complete)
task-x-window-system-core - X Window System (core components)
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