dselect (or apt) wish list
Hi,
For what it's worth, here's a wishlist for debian install scripts (in no
particular order).
1) There doesn't seem to be any order regarding which packages are
downloaded first. I suggest that, by default, dependencies should be
downloaded before the files that depend upon them. Likewise, there doesn't
seem to be any order in installation. I suggest the same thing for that.
2) If there are a lot of .deb files sitting around, this slows down dselect
by producing a lot of screen garbage during the "install" phase. I suggest
that .deb files that have already been installed (or that have not been
marked for installation) should not be displayed during this phase.
3) At the end of the "install" phase, dselect asks if it should delete
installed packages. I suggest that either the default be changed to 'no', or
else it be made possible to change the default via a config file. I really
hate having a single keypress be able to wipe out days of downloading.
4) It would be great to have a utility that searched my .dpkg/ tree and
identified any debs for which newer versions have already been downloaded.
That way I could delete the old ones and save space.
5) It would be great to do the following: take the output of "dpkg -l" and
feed it to dselect, so dselect automatically selects all the packages given.
That would make it much easier to install from scratch and still have the
system the way I like it. In other words, once I initially have the system
the way I like it, I could redirect "dpkg -l" to a file. Then, at any
subsequent reinstall, I could tell dselect to select all the packages from
that file.
6) In the "install" phase, when dselect asks if I would like to select the
individual packages, it would be fantastic if I could run up and down the
list, choosing and unchoosing various items, while seeing a dynamic update
of how much total space will be required. Also, even better would be the
ability to specify which packages should be downloaded before others (to
override the actions of suggestion #1 above).
7) In the "select" phase, rather than interrupt a selection when a conflict
or dependency is encountered, I suggest merely listing the dependencies and
conflicts indented beneath the selection, while moving the cursor to the
next item below that list. On the other hand, I have no problem having
conflicts and dependencies pointed out to me when I try to exit the "select"
phase (as the current version of dselect does).
8) Last but not least, during the "select" phase, when searching for
packages, only package names are searchable. I would really like to search
descriptions as well.
I hope no one takes offense to these suggestions. I'm just trying to help.
Zack
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