Re: Too much information! (And what to do about it.)
Ian Murdock writes (Too much information! (And what to do about it.)): With all of the new developers that are joining the Project and the number of new packages that are resulting from their involvement, it's becoming increasingly difficult, especially for newer users who aren't exactly sure what to look for, to browse the archive of packages without becoming overwhelmed at its sheer size. It's certainly great that all of these new packages are becoming available, but it's also presenting a problem for us, a problem which we need to address soon. What I propose we do is separate the distribution or system packages (those packages that constitute a complete system--definitely Base, Important, and Standard packages, and possibly Optional packages, too) from the application or extra packages that generally wouldn't be considered part of an operating system. With two such trees, the distribution would be far easier to manage. Comments? Now would be the perfect time to do something like this; many mirror sites are going to have to redownload everything anyway. In principle this sounds like a good idea. I don't have a strong opinion on whether Optional should be included in the `distribution'. However, it would be good if you don't break dselect's access methods c. These expect to find `stable', `development', `contrib' and `non-free' at the top level, and inside each a `binary' directory and in there a `Packages.gz' file. If you could make the split under there, by splitting each section into two directories, that would work better, I think. I think we should discuss this a bit before it gets done. Ian.
Re: Too much information! (And what to do about it.)
Ian Jackson [EMAIL PROTECTED], in a magnificent manifestation of deity, wrote: In principle this sounds like a good idea. I don't have a strong opinion on whether Optional should be included in the `distribution'. I think that it should be a part of the distribution (on the cd), it just gives people some demarcation as to when they have a complete system as opposed to a base system. I have a complete system here (and a bit more) even though I don't have the ham radio packages installed since I'm not a ham. (Well...) On the other hand, I do have an hp palmtop, so I have the lxtools package. Neither set of these constitute part of a complete system; they are optional. They do make part of a complete debian distribution though.a at the top level, and inside each a `binary' directory and in there a `Packages.gz' file. If you could make the split under there, by splitting each section into two directories, that would work better, I think. Sounds fine to me. Darren [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.daft.com/~torin/[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Darren Stalder/2608 Second Ave, @282/Seattle, WA 98121-1212/USA/+1-800-921-4996 @ Do you have your clothes on? I probably don't. Take yours off. Feel better. @ @ Sysadmin, webweaver, postmaster for hire. C and Perl programmer and tutor. @
Too much information! (And what to do about it.)
With all of the new developers that are joining the Project and the number of new packages that are resulting from their involvement, it's becoming increasingly difficult, especially for newer users who aren't exactly sure what to look for, to browse the archive of packages without becoming overwhelmed at its sheer size. It's certainly great that all of these new packages are becoming available, but it's also presenting a problem for us, a problem which we need to address soon. What I propose we do is separate the distribution or system packages (those packages that constitute a complete system--definitely Base, Important, and Standard packages, and possibly Optional packages, too) from the application or extra packages that generally wouldn't be considered part of an operating system. With two such trees, the distribution would be far easier to manage. Comments? Now would be the perfect time to do something like this; many mirror sites are going to have to redownload everything anyway.
