(please Cc followups to dburrows@cs.brown.edu, as my
primary email is only available via this nasty Web
client for me right now)
> The following subject has repeatedly been discussed during the last
> years. I still feel obliged to bring it up again, as it fizzled.
Unfortunately, I kept putting it off and then my computer
broke :( Thank goodness for DWN, or I'd have missed your
announcement.
Several months ago, I added support for better
package classification to aptitude. To try it out,
select "Browse Packages By Category" from the Views menu.
(this uses a different, experimental display mode -- use the "hier" grouping policy to see it in the normal expandable tree style)
The idea is quite similar to your suggestion, except that:
(a) It is hierarchical, so the number of items on the screen
at any one time is manageable.
(b) It uses external datafiles, so we don't have to change
the archive, and you can (theoretically) use
(c) It is implemented in a package manager available in the
Debian archive.
(d) The implementation is generic -- someone else should
be able to fairly easily lift the code into their own
frontend.
(e) Mostly-complete data sets exist for it.
Don't underestimate the difficulty of categorizing
6000+ (and counting) packages! My sample categorization
leaves out a lot of packages, and is not particularly
deeply thought-about, and it still took me literally
weeks, working a few hours a day on it, to get the
data made. (part of this was that I spent some time
working on getting the tools right, but..)
The one major problem (aside from the fact that it's not
as general as some people [0] would like) is that the
current implementation is VERY slow. Patches to fix this are welcome...uh...as soon as I get a new power supply, anyway.
I've attached README.hier from the aptitude source.
Look in src/generic for the implementation and a sample program using it.
Daniel
[0] Take a look at Eray's ontology stuff for an example of
an idea that will be cool if anyone ever manages to
implement it.
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