Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:
> On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 07:12:35PM +0100, Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote:
>> Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
>>> Also, do we really need *any* printing system as priority: standard? It's
>>> not clear to me that printing is still really part of a standard Unix
>>> installation, even for desktop users (and it definitely isn't for
>>> servers).
>> I believe it to be one of the more important bits of a standard Unix
>> *desktop* installation - but this just reminds me of the fact that I'm
>> quite uncomfortable with keeping a system like package priorities around
>> for much longer. Diverging use-cases (like in this case) show that one
>> definition of "standard" isn't really helpful anymore.
> Well, sure it is; it defines the lowest common denominator that we think
> should be installed by default on all systems. Just because it may be
> difficult to decide what that is doesn't make "standard" irrelevant, because
> we still /do/ have to decide what we're going to install by default. :)
Yes, but our current framework makes the decision more complex than it
needs to be: What we kick out from standard is either in the (gigantic)
desktop task or not installed at all anymore. Having a
standard-{desktop,server,...} task would make it easier.
>> I think we may want to start thinking about getting rid of the whole
>> thing and switching to something which allows us to express more complex
>> importance measurements for packages. In fact, d-i and its task system
>> have been a step in that direction, so we maybe should evaluate if we
>> want to formalize it a bit more and get it into policy to replace
>> priorities.
> The d-i task system looks at the Priority: standard packages to assemble the
> "standard" task...
Sure, but it also provides tasks that split up optional and extra into
manageable chunks. The need for that is not disputed, simply because of
the number of packages that are << standard. I just believe that the
number of candidates for standard has increased enough to make it
reasonable to apply a similar split.
Most people have no idea what the actual difference between extra and
optional is supposed to be, in fact, most people only work with two
priorities: standard and !standard.
Marc
--
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98: Emacs
emacs makes any computer slow
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