RE: Debian-Desktop

[Lindsay Allen <allen@cleo.murdoch.edu.au>]

In my practise run the other day I noted that I had to use my dselect
skills to deselect all except required packages.  Then I exited dselect
and ran dpkg --set-selections before running dselect again.

I also noted that the --set-selections acted only on those packages
specified in the file.  It left all other packages strictly alone.

Seems to me that the above problems would be solved if we had a script
(sed/awk) which would run through /var/lib/dpkg/status (using
the output of --set-selections as input) as follows:-

pseudo code
for each package
  if it is "required", leave it alone
  else if it is referenced in the input file
     select or deselect it accordingly
  else deselect it
done

If the installation script were to run this prior to running dselect the
novice would just pass over the "select" entry and proceed to "install".

Can anyone come up with a suitable script?  The two types of entries I saw
in my first run were like this:-

adduser						install
flex						deinstall

but it is quite possible that more types might show up as we progress down
this track.

Lindsay
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lindsay Allen   <allen@cleo.murdoch.edu.au>  Perth, Western Australia
voice +61 8 9316 2486    modem +61 8 9364-9832      32S, 116E
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
debian-user-request@lists.debian.org . 
Trouble?  e-mail to templin@bucknell.edu .