Guidelines for creating subpackages?

Patrice Dumas pertusus at free.fr
Sun Dec 2 20:06:44 UTC 2007


On Sun, Dec 02, 2007 at 01:39:31PM -0500, Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Sun, 2 Dec 2007 12:05:44 +0100
> Patrice Dumas <pertusus at free.fr> wrote:
> 
> > End-users also expect a package install not to drag in packages that
> > are not useful. Especially system administrator end-users who care
> > about avoiding bloat. Installing everything may be confusing too, not
> > for a user who just don't care about what is installed on his
> > computer but for a user who want to keep control.
> 
> 
> The problem is that "not useful" is subjective, extremely so.  Since we
> don't have smolt sending brainwave signatures so that we can tap in and
> determine what you really need at install time, we make "best guesses"
> and err on the side of usability rather than the alternatives where you
> have to constantly play the game of "oh, you want to do /that/ with
> your app, you need to install this subpackage, that subpackage, this
> other seemingly unrelated package, and that over there too."

I am not saying that we want fine grained split for every package, I say 
that it has merits in term of avoiding bloat. And also that there are
may categories of end-users, some that want to avoid selecting packages,
other who prefer selecting packages. And that in the end it is up to the 
packager.

--
Pat




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