Re: Hiding library packages from apt searches by default? (was: Re: Worthless node-* package descriptions in ITPs)
On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 9:32 PM, Christian Seiler wrote:
> Could we maybe hide library packages from apt searches by default?
This is going to have unintended consequences; for example, if we base
it on Debian Section fields, library source packages that build a
binary package containing tools, that are (incorrectly) put into the
libs section, will not be found by users.
> 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?
How would you propose to implement that? apt currently doesn't have
enough metadata about packages to say if they are end-user tools or
not, and it depends on the user which tools are acceptable. For
example; some folks can deal with the command-line but the majority of
humanity cannot, some folks dislike particular GUI toolkits, etc.
--
bye,
pabs
https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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