On Mon, 2008-05-19 at 09:45 -0500, Tom Mueller wrote:
> IPS has the concept of a "filter" on an image. For example, a
> particular file can be tagged with an ISA tag (sparc or x86) and then
> the image has a filter of ISA=x86.  Once this is done, only those
> files that are either tagged with ISA=x86 or that have no ISA tag will
> be downloaded.  This eliminates the need to have multiple packages
> merely for supporting multiple ISAs.  
> 
> These tags can also be used to specify files being for documentation,
> localization, etc. 

So this is very interesting and it sounds like something we could
use in pkgbuild to structure the package contents without
splitting them.  Unfortunately I couldn't find out more about
this feature, so I have some questions.  The goal would be to
package all components of an application in one package and
use tags to identify:
 - development files (headers, pkg-config, devel docs)
 - documentation (man pages, online help, devel docs)
 - l10n content (message catalogs, man pages, online help)

Is it possible, and if so how, to do the following:

 - initially install only the (untagged) runtime bits
 - add one more locale (i.e. files tagged for that locale) of a
   previously installed package
 - add the development files of a package previously installed
   without them
 - delete files belonging to a locale
 - apply similar changes to an entire image

Thanks,
Laca

> > > The only reason to split components into separate packages is if it
> > > makes sense to install one component but not the other. (For your example,
> > > this may make sense, of course.)
> > >   
> > >     
> > I can imagine at least two more reasons:
> > 1. when required part may be provided by different packages (imagine 
> > some tool using... say, sound encoder. It may use some helper provided 
> > by authors or third-party tool, like lame or ogg encoder)
> > 2. splitting package into arch-dep and arch-indep ones. Imagine game 
> > which comes with 500 MB of data (levels, music etc). With two 
> > architectures, sparc and x86, it's better to have 10 MB sparc package 
> > (game), 10 MB x86 binary package (game) and 500 MB 
> > architecture-independent package which can be installed on both types of 
> > machines (game-data)
> >   
> > > We really need to reduce the number of units of installed software that
> > > we need to manage, not increase that number. (The unit doesn't have to
> > > be the package, of course - we could have groupings above the package
> > > level.
> > >     
> > From my system administrator experience it's better to have minimal 
> > required subset installed -- because it's easier to manage. OTOH, 
> > grouping software in large pieces makes it easier to manage for 
> > maintainers, but to reach success on the market we should fulfill 
> > customers' meeds, shouldn't we?


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