Ludovic Brenta <[email protected]> writes: > 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.
Currently, synaptic gives an empty list when searching for "ada-compiler dependencies". So for that to work, all Ada packages should Suggest ada-compiler. That might be better than Suggest gnat. >>> 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. I see no way to get synaptic to search for "debtags". I guess aptitude supports that? Searching the synaptic help for 'debtags' says 'keywords' are the same thing. But the instructions given for searching on keywords don't work; that part of the GUI isn't present. Installing debtags and restarting synaptic didn't help. So debtags is not something we can expect newcomers to use. >>>> 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. How will you decide what to include in it? -- -- Stephe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
