Anthony Towns wrote: > I don't really understand task packages. I'd assume that they're there > to make it easy for people to do some particular common tasks (setup a > desktop environment, interact with your computer in japanese, play music, > do 3d graphics, program).
Right. Have you done a potato install ever? This should be fairly clear if so.. > It seems to me like it might be bing abused somewhat as an excuse to > advertise particular groups of packages. task-webserver-roxen, and > task-x-window-system come to mind as being more an excuse to group a > bunch of packages together than really focussing on being something > useful for the prospective user, for example. OTOH, "I want a useful X > environment" isn't an unreasonable task. Yes, task-webserver-roxen should not exist. I have written about this before. "I want a web server" is a suitable task, "I want web server foo" is not. > The *task* is really "usable 2d windowing environment for accessing > programs", it's not kde, or gnome, or xlib, or motif. Is it really > sensible to have the choice between the various windowing toolkits > made here? Would it be better/possible to have a task-desktop that > included both gnome and kde, and the best apps from both, and just let > the user use them? Obviously the packager would have to make a choice > amongst xdm, gdm and kdm, but that doesn't seem unreasonably difficult. Yes, probably. Remember, task packages arn't about choice, or rather they are about us making choices so a new user doesn't have to bother. > python > - how do I know whether I'm going to write "complicated" apps or not? > gnome-games > - i just want to play games, i don't care what toolkit they use > tcltk > - how do i kow if i want to run tcltk programs? debian packages will > install it if they need it, presumably the lsb will do likewise, > and anything i buy will tell me what i need to install, surely? > debug > - if I'm going to be programming, I'm probably going to be debugging. > if I'm not programming why would i be debugging? > devel-common > - C and C++ and Objective C are already covered with the specific > tasks, what's the point? > doc > - eh?? i have to go out of my way to get "General documentation"?? > python-web > - a general "i want to work on interactive web sites" task would make > sense to me (one that included, presumably, a free java, and zope, > and tomcat, and tools to do cgi in perl and python and whatever else) > but just for pythn? "apt-get install zope" if that's what you want. I think I agree with all of these. We should file bugs to get them removed. > The following seem to be just random collections of packages: > > python-bundle > x-window-system > gnome-apps > gnome-net I'm not sure aboyt task-x-window-system, but most of these have no business using the task- prefix. > a) There are a bunch of task- packages that aren't really useful. > > b) We can probably split tasks into three areas: > > * Install enough packages to satisfy most people who might > say "I want to do <..> with my computer" > > * Help someone set up some complicated service It doesn't have to be a complicated service. This is just another instance of "I want to do foo with my computer", where foo is web servering or dns serving, or firewalling, or whatever. > * Help someone make use of some hardware they have attached > to their computer, in a fairly generic way. > > I don't see any *good* reason for task- packages to conflict, though, > in the above, most task packages should be completely independent. Task packages should never conflict. -- see shy jo
