Re: reducing the number of (user visible) packages
Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder <avbidder@fortytwo.ch> writes:
> This is inspired by Goswin's recent post about the libfoo-common/libfoo
> pairs of packages, which will become even more frequent with multiarch.
>
> Disclaimer: No, I won't have time to work on it - sorry, folks. And anyway,
> this is post sarge.
>
> Proposal: split packages into 'conventional' debs and support debs.
>
> conventional debs would be real, normal packages.
>
> support debs would
> - never be displayed by any frontend (except by turning on all debugging
> etc. etc.)
> - have no installation scripts
> - have no files in /usr/share/docs
> - have no package description
Just a few thoughts late at night:
- existing dpkg/apt/aptitude/dselect has to keep working so we need a
full Packages file
- support packages could have a short description of "support package"
and "see foobar" as long description
- an extra field could be added to such packages so frontends can hide
them (or they just hide all "support package" descriptions. A
"support" section could also work.
- the Depends/Conflicts of support packages should already be covered
by the main package and then the stanzas for them would be realy
short
MfG
Goswin
Reply to: