On 13-Jan-2006, Michael Gilbert wrote: > what I am getting at is that there should be a simple way for the user > to discover what he or she just installed. "dpkg -L <package name>", > which is a good start, gives you information about installed files, > but the command itself is not easily discoverable (i didn't know about > it, and i've been a Debian user for 1.5 years). I agree with this point. Now that 'aptitude' (or other apt interfaces) are the main recommended package interfaces, there would be many users who install packages but never even use 'dpkg'. > there also isn't an easy way to discover package documentation. This one isn't really defensible. We have a standard, much-discussed location for package documentation: the /usr/share/doc/<packagename>/ directory. The job of telling people to look there is already being done, and has been for many years. Once you have been told "look in /usr/share/doc/foo/" several times, you can pretty easily see the pattern. Discovering package documentation is then a matter of looking in the expected place when installing a new package. > and often there isn't good information there anyway. This is the point to be addressed, I believe. If you find that you don't know how to use a package after looking in its documentation directory, file a (wishlist?) bug against the package, suggesting information that should be added or changed. > plus, i'm lazy, and that's a lot of path typing. Use a file browser then, if you don't like typing pathnames. > maybe what is needed is an option something like "$ dpkg -B foo" It still has the problem that "how do I use this package?" or "what executables were installed?" doesn't obviously have "use dpkg to find out" as an answer, especially since dpkg is so rarely used directly. > however, if users were trained (via release documentation) that this > is how to discover new packages, i think it would be very useful. I believe the documentation directory is the right place to add package-specific information. I retract my earlier suggestion of a static manifest file; that information is best generated directly from the package database. I like the idea (from another post) of browsing the files installed from the package manager; apparently synaptic can do this but aptitude can't? This would be a more discoverable method of getting at the standard information from the database. -- \ "Nature abhors a moron." -- Henry L. Mencken | `\ | _o__) | Ben Finney <ben@benfinney.id.au>
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