Re: Hiding library packages from apt searches by default? (was: Re: Worthless node-* package descriptions in ITPs)
Quoting Christian Seiler (2017-01-05 14:32:45)
> On 01/05/2017 02:06 PM, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>> Quoting Riku Voipio (2017-01-05 12:53:16)
>>> Vast majority of users would only install this via dependencies.
>>> It's hardly a node-specific problem that debian package searches
>>> output large amount of packages that are not useful unless you
>>> happen to be a programmer.
>>
>> ...and I agree that the issue is not specific to node-* packages, but
>> I find it is quite common there. Quite likely due to recent
>> inclusion of lots of packages, prepared semi-automated - as Philip
>> pointed out very well.
>
> Could we maybe hide library packages from apt searches by default? I
> think most users don't care about libraries in any language (be it
> Perl, C, JS, Python, ...), but only care about software they use
> directly. And developers that do care about libraries could pass a
> flag to APT to say "yeah, please show me all packages that match
> this". And maybe even indicated how many library packages were not
> shown in the default search results?
Sounds like a nice UI improvement if package managers could
(optionally!) skip package sections considered less relevant.
In my opinion that does not, however, change the need for package
descriptions to be generally understandable, no matter the package
section.
- Jonas
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* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
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