task packages and testing

[Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>]

In case you've not noticed, all the task packages have been removed from
testing, and tasksel now uses an alternate system that we hope will work
better.

Feel free to take a look at the tasks in tasksel and suggest
improvements. Please note that emails that demonstrate misunderstanding
of what tasksel and the task system is for will be ignored -- by me
anyway. See the tasks/ subdirectory in the tasksel source package or
cvs for details. That's not really what I'm writing about though..

With the task packages yanked from testing, there are a few types of
breakage that should be addressed:

1. Some packages used the task- prefix, but weren't really targeted at new
   users installing Debian and choosing a task. Instead they were useful
   metapackages for installing a closely-related (often all from one source
   package) set of packages. Examples:
   	task-x-window-system
	task-kde*
	taks-gnome*	
   Such packages, if their maintainer thinks they are generally useful,
   can still exist[1]. They just need to be turned into metapackages. This
   is easy: Remove the task- prefix. See the mozilla and netscape packages
   for examples of metapackages that have gotten it right all along.

2. Packages that still suggest task packages. There are 64 of these in
   testing[2], and those suggestions are broken now. Of course, there are
   plenty of other broken suggestions in Debian (I'm sure QA has a page
   somethere listing them all). But still maintainers should certianly
   try to clean up such things in their packages.

-- 
see shy jo

[1] Well, they continue to exist in unstable as long as their
    maintainers want them there, anyway. They just won't be released as
    part of woody..
[2] A large number of these are the kde-i18n-* series of packages. Like
    50 or so.