On Wednesday 2008 December 31 13:39:57 Bob McGowan wrote: > On Wed, 2008-12-31 at 11:03 -0600, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote: > <snip> > > > Completely normal. kde Depends on kdeaddons; kdeaddons Depends on > > noatun-plugins; noatun-plugins Depends on noatun. Of course, the kde > > package is not much (if any) more than a "meta-package"; it only exists > > to pull in other dependencies. The kdeaddons package is similar. > > I to was caught by this "issue" in my early exposure to Debian. So, > what's the quickest way to determine if a package is "meta-"? Description, mainly. There's other reasons to have an empty or nearly empty package that exists mostly for it's Depends/Recommends/Suggests. An alternative / parallel approach is "Tasks" through tasksel or aptitude, using them might be nicer for new users. > Would be nice if 'apt-get'/'aptitude' added a note to the item > indicating it was 'meta' and OK to remove. The only place I've ever > noticed this information is in the package description, which means it > may not be noticed. Sounds like a job for debtags. It would be nice to have this as a release goal for Squeeze, too. It's something simple that would make running Debian easier. *browses the DebTags site a bit* Well, there's already a tag "role::metapackage", and there's already as number of packages tagged with it, including kde and kdeaddons. I guess the next step is to have apt-get/aptitude show that information when you need it. You might file a wishlist bug against apt-get. Perhaps it's not a good release goal 'cause it's already done. ;) -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. bss@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/
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