Maintaining tasks files

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 06:29:11PM +0200, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
>
>(CC'ing you, as I know that you are currently travelling)
>
>On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 09:42:04 (CEST), Andreas Tille wrote:
>> There is no need to install a lot of applications on one machine.  
>> The blends-dev tools are building a tasksel control file which really 
>> would install everything in the task.  This was used by Debian Edu 
>> and the functionality is keept - but there is no need to really use 
>> tasksel (even if the name "tasks" is inspired by tasksel).  In Debian 
>> Med and Debian Jr. the usage of metapackages is prefered and there 
>> you have on one hand the alternatives option for instance
>>
>>    Depends: mplayer | xine-ui | ffmpeg
>>
>> is fullfilled if only one of them is installed as well as if you can 
>> also use
>>
>>    Suggests: <not so important package>
>>
>> which IMHO are two important advantages over the tasksel approach.
>
>At what time are these metapackages used/installed? After tasksel in 
>the installer?  Instead of tasksel?

By tasksel.

Correct me if I am wrong, Andreas, but I believe it works exactly like a 
standard old-fashioned metapackage, and that the difference is in how it 
is maintained (i.e. developed) and what *additional* uses it has 
maintaining package relations like this.


>Let's imagine the following depends in the 'multimedia-consumer'
>metapackage:
>
>Depends: mplayer | gxine | totem | kaffeine | dragonplayer | vlc
>
>I guess that if we the user first selects to install an KDE system in 
>tasksel in d-i, and in that task kaffeine (or dragonplayer, not sure 
>what the current default media player is) is installed, the 
>'multimedia-consumer' metapackage will not install any other media 
>player, correct?

Beware that if *both* KDE *and* multimedia-consumer is selected during 
same installation routine (e.g. at initial install) then there is no 
guarantee which media-player, or how many of them, gets installed.


>Assuming that an 'LXDE' task does not install any media player and is 
>selected first in the installer, does the 'multimedia-consumer' 
>metapackage only install mplayer and nothing else?

Beware that if first installing KDE + multimedia-consumer, and then at a 
later installation batch installs LXDE, then there is no ensurance (from 
multimedia-consumer) that any multimedia tools optimal for LXDE gets 
installed.  Even uninstalling and later reinstalling multimedia-consumer 
does not ensure this.

It is (during installation, at least) simply a metapackage!


  - Jonas

-- 
  * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
  * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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