Re: A proposal to improve dselect
In <[🔎] 199701071700.SAA03822@xs2.xs4all.nl> Gertjan Klein <gklein@xs4all.nl> writes:
>Kirk Hilliard wrote:
>[A nice list of suggested dselect improvements, which I mostly agree
>with]
>In addition, I think the following improvements are important:
> - Create a log file containing *everything* that is output to the
>screen (stdout and stderr). I noticed more than one package complaining
>it couldn't fully configure itself for one reason or other, and telling
>me I could redo the configuration manually by running "xxx". It is not
>nice to have to write this down. If people are concerned about disk
>space, a menu choice could be to clear the log file.
> - Whenever a package returns an error when installing, present the
>user with the option to stop installation entirely (so the problem can
>be delt with), or continue with the next package.
I have a really radical suggestion, and that is to split off the
installation process from dselect. Have a dinstall and rename dselect to
dmanager or something. Then make dinstall a much simpler, less
featureful tool, that offers to install groups of packages to fit
various usages. One of my favorite installation tools is the simple one
that comes with BSDI, which basically has about 30 selections that you
can select to install, with X, development, X development, and other
relatively natural broad categories of installation packages. This
allows a very fast simple method to get a system up that is roughly what
you want. Then, after these base and extrapackages are installed and
configured, you would use dmanage(formerly dselect) to tune the
existing instal, add all the custom optional packages you want, and
finally to help you upgrade all your installed packages as you need.
--
John Henders - System Administrator - Mindlink!/Wimsey
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