Je 1999/07/23(5)/23:07, Wichert Akkerman montris sian geniecon skribante: [2K packages problem: more more sections, hierarchical sections, etc]
> There have been proposals of using keywords to make it easy to search > for packages, and people suggesting that we make the sections more > hierarchical and add subsections. > > However with the new menu-system as introduced by Joost I was wondering > if we could use his dynamic menu system for packages as well? We could > use our existing sections, perhaps add a second hierarchy level and use > keywords in the same way the menu system uses hints? The main reason I introduced those "hints" (or keywords) in menu is that - the number of installed packages varies on every debian system, and - the `optimal' number of submenus in every menu depends on both the user and the window-manager. Although the number of debian packages grows exponential, it does seem that on ftp server, the number is identical, and, although the `optimal' entries in a directory probably does depend on whether you look at it with straight ftp or netscape, also there it doesn't seem that there is a big need to make the number of entries in a directory configurable. However, the hints code is written now, and it could well be used to setup directories populated with symlinks to the `real, static, current' directories. For those symlink-populated directories we could indeed set some desired number of directory entries, and regenerate the whole structure every time dinstall is ran. Naturally this will cause many people to complain about the package hierarchy not being static any more -- but those people can always use the old, non-symlink, real structure. (Just like those people can use the old menu tree in menu). Probably there are two different types of users (with some overlap): those who `know' the debian package directories, and those who don't. Those who know the structure, should use the old directories, those who don't know the structure are the ones that complain about the hugeness of the directories, and they can go on looking in the `user-friendly' symlink directories. Or, even setup their own personal symlink-directory if they've got a full mirror/CD. (Probably the directory structure of where the actual files reside should be as static as possible, for the mirrors etc). -- joostje
