dselect & dpkg improvements

[gobbel_no.junk.mail@see.message.body]

[reply address disguised for anti-spam purposes.  Real humans are encouraged
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My impression has always been that dselect was modeled on inst, which used to
be the only way to install software on Silicon Graphics systems.  If dselect
wasn't at least inspired by inst, then it's a case of parallel evolution,
because the user interface is very similar, and the SGI package management
system appears to have many of the same features as dpkg.  I always hated inst
because of what I found to be a very non-intuitive user interface, and dreaded
having to do system upgrades on SGI machine (well, I still do, but not because
of the way their package management system works).  Anyway, Irix releases from
5.0 and up now have a replacement for inst called the Software Manager, which
runs on top of X, and which I find very easy to use.  The usual way to do a
major upgrade on an SGI is to use inst only for the most minimal installation,
then to use the Software Manager for the rest.

Anyone who has in mind to redesign dselect or create a successor to it would
do well to find an SGI system somewhere, and at least get a tour of the
Software Manager.  A "staged" installation procedure, using a curses-based
tool just to get X and the most essential stuff (e.g. a simple editor),
followed by a nice X-based tool, makes a lot of sense.  Perhaps in that case
there wouldn't be any need for a major rework of dselect--though I do think
that a "folding" feature would be a very nice addition.  I would be quite
happy to have a Tcl clone of the Software Manager for Debian, and I don't
think it would be too hard to implement.

[reply address disguised for anti-spam purposes.  Real humans are encouraged
to contact me: my username is gobbel, my host is cogsci.ucsd.edu.  Spammers go
away--forever.]

-Randy


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