Package formats...

[Micah Yoder <yoderm@geocities.com>]

Erik Walthinsen (Omega) wrote:

> > Computer-naive people don't want to use the package manager at all,
> > they want to check a box that says "I want to have a web site", etc.
> > and go on. We are providing a shell-and-dialog hack to do this on
> > Debian 2.0 .
> Yup.  The installer is going to be interesting because of this.  Check the
> archives for more detail, but the difference is that Windoze installs very
> few components, so package selection is trivial.  SEUL, on the other hand,
> will probably be a full CD of stuff, so package selection will be far from
> trivial, unless we can dream up some decent way to simplify it.

Yeah.....we could have a list of possible uses for the system.  The
users could click what things they'd use it for.  Each package could be
ranked from 1 to 10 in importance for its given use.  Then the system
would just start filling up the hard drive with packages, stopping when
the HD's almost full or everything that fits is installed.

Loren S Osborn wrote:

> I may need a few lessons in RPM, but if we make a stipulation that all RPMs
> need to have configuration file 'A' in it, How can we have any athority
> over that for packages outside of SEUL??? I'm not saying we shouldn't use
> RPMs format, just their name (so as not to confuse users)... How do we explain
> to them which RPMs *WILL* work and which won't... especially if they're still
> learning the concept of a file???

Yeah, I think the idea of having special RPMs with a special
"SEUL.config" or whatever file is pretty good.  But

1.  These RPMs should also work on any Linux system (though others might
ignore SEUL.config), and
2.  SEUL should be able to install ANY RPM.  If it doesn't have the
config file, it could just search for executables, readmes, graphics,
whatever, and make a folder of them.


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