On 9/1/06, Benjamin Esham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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 >
The deborphan and debfoster tools will let you go through and find those packages which have no dependencies on them. However, these won't just be "applications" but also developer packages that contain build-time stuff like header files. (the latter do have build-time dependencies on them, but not run-time ones) A way to distinguish between these two cases is that the developer packages frequently have a -dev suffix on them--or if not, there is often a corresponding -bin package that contains executables. You can also use "dpkg -L" to see if a package installs stuff in /sw/bin or /sw/sbin. If not, it's likely not an application package. -- Alexander K. Hansen Fink Documenter (still) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Fink-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-users
