Re: [custom] Some issues for custom debian distributions

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Joey Hess]
> If you need to generate your own Packages files, which you might want to
> do for various reasons, you could instead add Task: overrides to the
> Packages files. Then use 'tasksel install' (that command may need to be
> fixed first) to install the task. This would sidestep the dependency
> problem. 

This would only work with CD installs, where we can control the
packages file.  I would like it to work with network installs as well,
so I want another mechanism.

> Alternatively, you could get a similar effect by making the task
> package only recommend most of the stuff in the task (except perhaps
> a few key packages), and installing it with aptitude, which can pull
> in recommends. I am actually thinking about switching tasks back
> over to real packages using recommends like this, a few years down
> the road. I would be interested in the results of a test case.

Hm, this might work.  I'll try to look at it later.

> As discussed at DebConf, I would like to make debconf have better
> support for pre-populating a database, when I find some time to work
> on it.

I believe it should be part of d-i and base-config, to make sure all
custom distributions use the same mechanism.  We could just copy the
Skolelinux method into base-config, or come up with some other method
if you do not like that.

> Could this fit into the language-env package somehow? Debian needs
> to go a few steps further in providing a localised system after
> install, with language and locale set to the install langage. At the
> moment language-env only displays a stupid debconf message when
> installed, and allows per-user configuration, but it seems the place
> to put a global config too.

The language-env package only set the language per user.  We wanted to
change the global setting.  It might be a good idea to merge our
locale-config-skolelinux into language-env.  I'm not sure why it
wasn't done when Dagfinn Ilmari Mansåker looked at this (he made the
initial version of locale-config-skolelinux).