fc5: install everything?

Andreas M. Kirchwitz fedora-list at list.zikzak.de
Fri May 26 20:48:43 UTC 2006


Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:

 >> I found the FC5 lack of 'install everything' to be a really serious pain 
 >> on the machine I built a week and a half ago as I had to do it three or 
 >> four times in a row as I worked through the problems I was having with 
 >> install media.
 >> 
 >> It is aggravated by the fact that choosing a group of things doesn't 
 >> actually mean you get everything in that group, either, and so you have to 
 >> manually tick through nearly *every* menu to make sure that you have 
 >> actually have a full install.
 >
 > You can right click on a group in both the Installer and Pirut to select
 > every package in a group. Otherwise you might use kickstart.
 
This is still a time-consuming, error-prone and (sorry, no offense)
"dumb" task. The deselected groups have to be selected, and then the
individual packages can be added with the menu by right-clicking.
It's quite a lot of them. A "Select All" button/checkbox
(not to be confused with the old "Everything" option) would be nice
to select everything that can be installed anyway.

On the other hand, that package selection process is really weird.
It's unpredictable, which packages get their according devel package
(with header files and config tools) installed as well, and which not.
Even if everything is selected, a number of packages don't have their
*-devel package installed. But this is necessary to develop and
compile software.

OK, missing packages can be installed afterwards, but that's even
more time-consuming. If I select all development packages during
installation, why don't I get all packages installed *with* their
devel packages? Do they do any harm? Do they confuse end-users?
This might be considered a bug.

The current package selection process might be perfect for end-users
who never compile anything. Maybe some Ubuntu users will change to
Fedora now.

However, as a developer or programmer, Fedora Core now requires a lot
of additional work to make the machine usable. This has been much
better in previous releases.

I filed a bug report, but I don't think that they understand my point.
It became a duplicate of the "Install Everything" bug that will never
be fixed. But my bug wasn't pro or contra the old "Install Everything"
checkbox. The current installation process makes it impossible to
get a system right from the beginning where things fit together nicely.
I get most of the libraries, but I don't get their header files
(includes). If I select all development packages, isn't it obvious
that I want most/all packages installed *with* their devel packages?

That said, it doesn't help much to use bugzilla on specific topics.
(As some people here suggested.)

Fedora seems to become an end-user distribution, anD times might get
harder for developers, programmers and people who like to compile
stuff on their own instead of using pre-build packages.

	Greetings, Andreas




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