Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote: > Ludovic Brenta wrote: >> Stephen Leake wrote: > >>> [...] "how does someone new to Debian discover all the >>> Ada packages that are available". > > And "how can he/she easily install a complete Ada > development environment". > >>> The answer could be the same, or it could be "run the >>> aptitude character based GUI, and type some obsure >>> commands", or it could be "run the Synaptic modern GUI, >>> use the buttons to search for gnat in 'dependencies'". >>> >>> The latter seems likely to be the closest to the >>> "typical" modern user's expectations, except that they >>> will be more likely to try searching for "Ada" in >>> "description and name" first, and get _lots_ of false >>> positives (that's what I just did :). > > I think we should expect people to search for "Ada". How > can we help them get most out of that query?
There is a virtual package "ada-compiler" provided by gnat; from there they should follow the reverse dependencies. Granted, that may not be as obvious as it could be. [...] >> Note: there is a fourth answer: use debtags. This is >> available both in aptitude and in synaptic; but it >> requires brave souls to add tags to each package and >> that's not done in the debian/control files but externally >> in a tags database. > > How do the users benefit from debtags? Does Synaptic give > search results with matching debtags higher priority than > those with matching descriptions? You search either by browsing the trees OR by looking for keywords OR by looking for a set of debtags. There is no priority involved; you get a different result set for each query. >>> Now we are talking about a different problem; how to >>> install packages once we find out about them. >> >> I'd like this to be as immediate as possible; there should >> not be separate commands. > > Wouldn't my suggestion of a dummy "Ada developer's complete > toolbox" package solve this? Yes; I think I'll try to implement your suggestion when I get around to it. The problem is that this meta-package would require maintenance. >>> I doubt _any_ user will want to simply install >>> "everything that uses Ada". I expect them to browse the >>> list, decide to install a couple of packages to start >>> with, and type: >>> >>> aptitude install libopentoken-dev libgnadesqlite-dev >>> >>> or just click on the check boxes in Synaptic. > > I find that process so annoying, so I have created an awful > hack, which installs all the Ada packages I know of in one > step. I just want to have everything available fast. Once > we are in a situation where Debian has five Ada libraries > for each problem, it might not be the ideal situation, but > right now visibility and easy access is more important. It would be nice if you would turn this hack into a .deb meta-package called "ada-development-environment" and let me sponsor it :) -- Ludovic Brenta. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/5a73556084b8e195a27ca7df97c55...@localhost
