Re: package sections (2K packages problem)

[joost witteveen <joostje@cistron.nl>]

Je 1999/07/23(5)/23:07, Wichert Akkerman montris sian geniecon skribante:

[2K packages problem: more more sections, hierarchical sections, etc]

> There have been proposals of using keywords to make it easy to search
> for packages, and people suggesting that we make the sections more
> hierarchical and add subsections.
> 
> However with the new menu-system as introduced by Joost I was wondering
> if we could use his dynamic menu system for packages as well? We could
> use our existing sections, perhaps add a second hierarchy level and use
> keywords in the same way the menu system uses hints?

The main reason I introduced those "hints" (or keywords) in menu
is that 

 - the number of installed packages varies on every debian system, and
 - the `optimal' number of submenus in every menu depends on 
   both the user and the window-manager.

Although the number of debian packages grows exponential, it does seem
that on ftp server, the number is identical, and, although the `optimal'
entries in a directory probably does depend on whether you look at it
with straight ftp or netscape, also there it doesn't seem that there
is a big need to make the number of entries in a directory configurable.

However, the hints code is written now, and it could well be used
to setup directories populated with symlinks to the `real, static, current'
directories. For those symlink-populated directories we could
indeed set some desired number of directory entries, and regenerate the
whole structure every time dinstall is ran.


Naturally this will cause many people to complain about the package
hierarchy not being static any more -- but those people can always
use the old, non-symlink, real structure. (Just like those people can
use the old menu tree in menu).
Probably there are two different types of users (with some overlap):
those who `know' the debian package directories, and those who don't.
Those who know the structure, should use the old directories, those
who don't know the structure are the ones that complain about the hugeness
of the directories, and they can go on looking in the `user-friendly'
symlink directories. Or, even setup their own personal symlink-directory
if they've got a full mirror/CD.


(Probably the directory structure of where the actual files
reside should be as static as possible, for the mirrors etc).

-- 
joostje