[Pkg-lxde-maintainers] RFC: bringing back task packages

[Andreas Tille]

[Not sure whether we should keep the long To: - list, I'd suggest
 continuing on debian-devel but keep it for the moment.]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 07:20:30PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> A long time ago, tasksel installed task packages, which were regular
> metapackages. This was dropped because the task packages had to Depend
> on many packages, which made the installed system brittle, and made 
> testing propigation a problem. Now that Recommends are installed by
> default, I'm revisiting the idea of using task packages. It solves
> many issues and inconsistencies with tasksel vs the rest of Debian.

If I understand the consequences of the statement correctly I welcome
this step very much.
 
> ### blends
> 
> I think there is interest in getting some blends displayed in Taskel?

Yes, definitely!

> It's mostly orthagonal to this proposal, but this would help with
> giving you full control over what your tasks do. I do feel that blends
> need to be listed below the other tasks in tasksel, and probably with
> a divider between them.

This would be an acceptable approach.

> Also, we have been careful to only have ten
> tasks, to avoid overloading the user; and there is a limit to the length
> of the list before it begins scrolling, so the d-i team would have to
> look at the UI before adding Blends to the interface.

The requirement for a limited set of tasks to provide a good overview is
reasonable but has two flavours:  On one hand it restricts the number of
Blends we can include into the list and on the other hand it might have
an influence on the number of "tasks"[1] we are maintaining inside each
Blend which exceeds 10 drastically at least for three Blends (the most
active ones).