Re: [Synaptic-devel] experimental task support added

[Panu Matilainen]

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Michael Vogt wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 11:04:38AM +0300, Panu Matilainen wrote:
[..]
> > Hmm. I think I'd want to know what's in a task before installing it but 
> > maybe that's just me :) Here's what the current output of groupinstall 
> > looks like:
> > address@hidden pmatilai]$ apt-cache showgroup gnome-desktop
> > Group:
> >   gnome-desktop
> > Description:
> >   GNOME is a powerful, graphical user interface which includes a panel, 
> > desktop, system icons, and a graphical file manager.
> > Required groups: 
> >   base-x
> > Packages: 
> >   gnome-user-docs
> >   control-center
> >   gnome-themes
> >   gedit
> >   gnome-system-monitor
> >   gnome-applets
> >   ...
> 
> This looks good. I think that we may want to strip the "Group" and the
> "Required groups" but "Packages:" is interessting.

The current output is just kinda mimicing apt-cache show <pkg> output. Or
something :) For apt-purposes I want to leave the "Group" there since you
can ask for several group descriptions at once, without "Group" you don't
know which group is which. Easy to filter out by checking if it's running
from synaptic or apt so no problem there. It'd be nice if "Required
groups" would be at least allowed in the output as well but no big deal if
not.

> 
> > Probably need to change that a bit for Synaptic but I think I'll wait a 
> > bit for things to settle down before fixing the comps-backend for real.
> > 
> > BTW does tasksel support the notion of tasks requiring other tasks?
> 
> No. This needs to be handled by the backend. I guess the easiest
> solution is to just return the packages of the tasks selected + the
> dependant tasks. But I'm open for suggestions of course :)

Yeah, the current comps-backend has an option whether to recursively 
process group dependencies or not, and just return all the packages from 
all the dependant groups in recursive mode. The recursive mode can easily 
pull tons of unwanted cruft onto system but *can* be very powerful in some 
cases.. so I guess it's best left as an option defaulting to off (as it is 
in current groupinstall)

So nothing required from tasksel unless Debian starts using 
task-dependencies, and nothing required from Synaptic either, other than 
possibly showing depending groups/tasks in task description (see above)

> 
> > Another thing we've been pondering about with Richard is how to present 
> > language-related items - Suse backend looks like this currently:
> > Group: Kde-Desktop
> > Summary: KDE Desktop Environment
> > Available languages:
> >    cs da de el es fr hu it ja lt nl pl pt ru sk sl sv ta tr
> > Required groups:
> >   X11
> >   Basis-Sound
> > Packages:
> > 
> > ..but then similar info isn't really available in comps.xml, instead it 
> > has groups like "german-support" which has German manpages and things like 
> > that.
> 
> Debian has a similar problem. There is the problem that we have like
> 20 language tasks. But we don't want to display them all :)

Indeed :)

> 
> Joeyh implemented a system where each task can call a "test"
> script. This script then decides if a task is displayed or not. This
> is now used to hide most of the language tasks by checking what
> default locale is used (IIRC this is how it works).

Hmm... I wonder if that's such a good idea: if you only show language 
tasks based on current/default locale .. isn't it likely that the task for 
current locale is already installed? :) Doing it the other way around 
doesn't save much either, but I don't have any bright (nor dim) ideas how 
to handle them :( Maybe something like a checkbox to select whether to 
show language tasks or not and default to off?

        - Panu -