Hello all,

I’m trying to "tidy up" my Fink installation by removing packages that I
don’t need.  After thinking about this, I realized that there are two
general categories of Fink packages:

1. Applications (e.g. Firefox, GIMP, Inkscape). These are things that you
    install and then *do something with*; they have intrinsic value.

2. Libraries (e.g. libgnomecanvas, popt). These are things that you must
    install in order to build and use other packages, but which have no
functionality on their own. You must install yet more packages to make
    them useful.

Now, these categories are by no means absolute; an XML developer might
consider libxslt an application because, to him, it is useful by itself. On the whole, though, applications are *packages upon which no other packages
depend*.

(Perhaps we should say, "upon which only plugins and extensions depend"; The GIMP is certainly an application, but utility packages, Perl modules, etc. depend on it. An alternate definition is "upon which no other / installed/
packages depend", assuming that you have no such extensions installed.)

I guess my point in writing all of this is to ask: is there any way to
determine which of my packages are applications and which are libraries?
Such a thing would not only aid in cleaning up messy Fink installations, but
it would also provide a list of "the things you can install with Fink."

Sorry for the long post, but I’ve been thinking about this concept for a
while, and wanted to know if anyone else has had similar thoughts.

Cheers,
--
Benjamin D. Esham
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  |  AIM: bdesham128  |  Jabber: same as e-mail
“The wizards represent all that the true ‘Muggle’ most fears:
They are plainly outcasts and comfortable with being so. Nothing
is more unnerving to the truly conventional than the unashamed
misfit!”                                          — J.K. Rowling

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