Anaconda is not the place for pedantic customization

[Chris Ricker]

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003, Jef Spaleta wrote:

> meets the need provided is to be seen. But I'm arguing that any
> technical solution as a replacement for non-essential deps that requires
> anaconda to offer package grouping choices is a bad one.  You pick your
> fights, I'll pick mine :->   

Fair enough ;-). Long-term, I'd like to see anaconda becoming a minimal
kickstart, followed by a post-minimal install package install / configure /
etc.  phase. I think we're actually in agreement there....

> And other than the Suggested/Recommended dep tagging being added to
> packages I'm really not sure that any other offered solution will work
> for the cases the non-essential dep tagging is being used for.

The problem there is that that requires extending rpm. I know there's been
periodic mention of it on the rpm list. I can't remember what Jeff's opinion
on it was, though....

I'm also actually not convinced that Suggested/Recommended is that great a 
solution. The problem with it is that it's completely manual to establish. 
Of course, I can't think of any non-manual solution to offer instead ;-)

> It's clear the goal to date has not been focused on providing ultimate
> configurability over what is installed. The focus has clearly been to
> make sure that the software 'preferred' in a general usage scenario is
> installed so mere mortals do not suffer from lack of
> functionality/featuritis. The general use case is no customization. If a
> solution that gives you more customization control does not work
> reliably or is much harder to test and debug for the general use no
> customization scenario...its not a good solution.

I agree that's been the goal to date for RHL / RHEL, but I don't think it
makes sense as a goal for Fedora. The Fedora audience is supposed to be
hobbiests / early adopters. In other words, people who want maximum
configurability. No customization / general use is RHEL.

For Fedora, I'd say go with automatic (library linkage) dependencies, bundle
similar things in groups in comps / r-c-packages, and let the users do what
they want beyond that....

later,
chris