Re: dselect (or apt) wish list
Hello Zack Brown <zbrown@lynx.neu.edu>,
> I suggest that, by default, dependencies should be downloaded
> before the files that depend upon them.
Any particular reason?
> Likewise, there doesn't seem to be any order in installation. I
> suggest the same thing for that.
Doesn't make any difference, does it? (If it does, it's a bug.)
Or rather: for most dependencies, it doesn't matter, so it's done in
any order. In the very special cases where it does matter,
installation is done in the correct order. Search for "Pre-Depends"
in the documentation.
The dependencies specify the order of *configuration*.
> 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'
...
Well, once you've installed them, you usually don't need them any more.
> 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.
If you want to save space, you can delete any that have been
installed. Unless you want to install them on another machine or
something.
> 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.
"dpkg -l" is not suitable for this, since it truncates package names
to 15 (?) characters. Somebody already suggested --get-selections.
> Then, at any subsequent reinstall,
Why would you be reinstalling? (Yes, you could want to do that, but
often it's easier to just upgrade the packages you want. Unless the
system is seriously hosed, I guess, but at that stage this'll be the
least of your problems.)
The "format your hard disk and re-install the OS" method of technical
support should be left in the MS world where it belongs :-)
> 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.
Yup. (Actually, it'd be better to have that directly in the "select"
screen.)
> 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.
You can always quit out of dselect or switch to another VT and do a
"less /var/lib/dpkg/available". Like most things in Unix, it's an
ordinary text file.
HTH - HAND
Jiri <jiri@baum.com.au>
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