Re: Comments please

[George Bonser <grep@oriole.sbay.org>]

On 31 Jan 1998 jfm2@club-internet.fr wrote:

> The Debian method could be useful for downloading a package but it is
> really irritating and distracting when you are installing the whole
> distrib from CD.

Ah!  There is a very easy way to work around this problem. Do not select
any additional packages other than possibly a substitiute MTA, mail and
news reader the first time through dselect.  Try to limit your activity to
only removing options after you have added those three above.

Debian, for example, selects emacs as the editor, the mail reader and the
news reader.  If you try to remove emacs before you have selected an
alternative of these ... yeah, you are going to be thrown into the
conflict screen.

If you simple select an alternative of these things and then let the
preselected stuff install, THEN go back and rerun dselect to add/remove
other things, you have a much easier time of it.

Here is why ... on the initial run, almost nothing is installed and a
gazillion things are pre-selected for you.  If you make a change it is
a domino effect. If you unselect emacs, the thing screams and unselects a
LOT of other packages that require the functions provided by emacs.  These
other things then cause yet MORE things to be unselected that depended on
them and pretty soon the whole thing can come unraveled.

I would do things a little differently than debian does.  I would simply
ask the user if they were going to use emacs or not, find out where you
are installing from and run a scripted package retrieval/installation that
installs the preselected options THEN throws you into dselect. Oh, I would
also ask which MTA you want because changing it after installation is a
real bugger.




> You are prompted and reprompted until you end not
> knowing what you were doing.  In fact many times I was prompted when
> in fact I had from the start the intention to install the dependency
> only that the package depending on was shown before the dependency.
> An ergonomic disaster.

Agreed 100%.  That is ine of the things I aim to see fixed one way or
another.



George Bonser 
If NT is the answer, you didn't understand the question. (NOTE: Stolen sig)
http://www.debian.org
Debian/GNU Linux ... the maintainable operating system.

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