On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 10:41:09PM +0200, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-10-11 at 22:00 +0200, Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote:
> > The main things that this thread shows me, is that it is *not* immediately
> > clear to people not too familiar with Debian that the removal of the 'gnome'
> > package will not have *any* effect on what actual software is actually installed
> > on your system.
>
> Indeed, and this is because the meta-package is not a really good tool
> for this job. It has to depend on all packages in order to install them
> all, so if you remove one component you get the confusing message that
> you need to remove "gnome" aswell.
>
> As most of us I'm not too affectionally engaged with our friends from
> Redmond, but they've solved this kind of problem in a simple and elegant
> way in the installation of MS Office. If you check the box in front of
> PowerPoint, you get the whole thing, or uncheck it and don't install it.
> But users who want to customize a bit, can click the + or arrow or
> whatever in front of PowerPoint and are offered the choice to
> (de-)select many of the sub-components of the item.
>
> I'm not sure whether something like this is already possible, but in my
> opinion would be a good way to offer this kind of choice during the
> installation.
>
>
> regards,
> Thijs
Hi Thijs and fellow DDs,
something just sprang into my brain as you mentioned the 'm$ office
thingy'. gnome is a meta-package and someone wondered how he could
install 'his' gnome. here is a scenerio:
apt-get install gnome
(gnome installs as usuall, but creates a configuration file--blank at
first?)
dpkg-reconfigure gnome
(this presents a debconf-like screen that displays the basic gnome
packages and also displays optional gnome packages with select/unselect
boxes. after the optional packages are selected, the choices are noted
in a configuration file, and the unselected apps would than be
a)marked for removal in the status file so that the next upgrade cycle
would remove them
or
b)removed by 'apt-get remove'
not sure if I need "a AND b" or "a OR b".
apt-get install gnome
(now the apt front-end would read the meta-package configuration file to
determine what to install/upgrade. Thus you get to have 'your' gnome and
upgradeing gnome would only install what you want thus saving time and
effort)
I'm sure that are 1000 unknown scenerios of how this could lead to
breakage, but on first blush it seem an interesting idea.
Cheers,
Kev
--
counter.li.org #238656 -- goto counter.li.org and be counted!
`$' $'
$ $ _
,d$$$g$ ,d$$$b. $,d$$$b`$' g$$$$$b $,d$$b
,$P' `$ ,$P' `Y$ $$' `$ $ "' `$ $$' `$
$$ $ $$ggggg$ $ $ $ ,$P"" $ $ $
`$g. ,$$ `$$._ _. $ _,g$P $ `$b. ,$$ $ $
`Y$$P'$. `Y$$$$P $$$P"' ,$. `Y$$P'$ $. ,$.
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature