Excessive package interdependency

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le jeu 18/12/2003 à 22:49, Chris Ricker a écrit :
> On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Chris Adams wrote:
> 
> > Once upon a time, Alan Cox <alan at redhat.com> said:
> > > You also want to remember bundles (or guess them for old setups), so that
> > > you can say "has gnome" ok now in FC2 gnome has added x and y, stick up a
> > > "The package groups you have selected have been expanded in this release,
> > >  shall I also installl..."
> > 
> > If there was a "Gnome-Package-fc1-1.rpm" that provided nothing but
> > "GNOME" and required all the core gnome RPMs, then when FC2 came out and
> > "Gnome-Package-fc2-1.rpm" required the new set of core gnome RPMs, this
> > would be automatic (then there could be Gnome-Games, Gnome-Apps,
> > Gnome-Devel, KDE, KDE-Apps, etc.).

The problem with this system (as evidenced by the lsb list of artificial
deps) is you force a specific set of packages on the user. One of the
reasons to go a comps-like way is to have group suggestions (like in
anaconda) and let users remove the parts they absolutely do not want.

Remember, we are talking subjective deps here, the system won't crash if
a user remove a small part of a group suggestion.

> > I know the "virtual package" idea has been tossed around before.  I
> > think it is a good idea; it handles this without additional software or
> > config files or anything.
> 
> I like virtual packages, but another idea which gives the same functionality 
> would be a text interface to redhat-config-packages.... The broad categories 
> in that are the same granularity as virtual packages.

The idea (for me at least) is to "liberate" package groups so users with
different interests can cook up the groups they want, and specify
bundles using generic unmodified Fedora packages (instead of having
everyone stick their fingers in the same specs adding artificial deps
and/or Suggestions for very different and conflicting reasons)

It has just been written on the list the comps.xml was not heavily
reviewed/maintained. Why is that so ? The group of people who can change
it and test the result is very small - but with anyone able to define
groups in the wild distributions could merge the best/most popular
bundles/profiles in a new comps.xml before their first beta and I bet
we'd see big improvements.

Cheers,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot
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