metapackages

[Janusz S. Bień]

Hi!

Let me first introduce myself.

I am a computer scientist and a linguist. I use Debian since several
years, since a year on a new computer. Even with a help of my
colleagues I am unable to configure Debian by hand to fully use my
hardware. On the other hand, Knoppix recognizes my hardware almost
ideally but is missing some packages which are important for me. So I
am about to switch to Knoppix based installation and to modify
it. After reaching a relatively stable situation I intend to remaster
Knoppix and to provide it to my students which have similar needs as
myself.

I have a lot of ideas how to make Debian more usable :-) However, in
this letter I would like to make just two points.

First, I think metadistros is the right way to go.

Secondly, I would like raise a terminological question: what is a
metapackage?


The metadistros white paper
(http://metadistros.hispalinux.es/whitepaper.pdf) says

        Metapackages are .deb packages that only contain dependencies
        for applications that we wanted to be installed in a distribution.

On the other hand, on Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Enrico Zini wrote on
debian-devel about Debian usability project

>The initial main areas of interest were:
>
> - status of package metadata: what is ok, what is still missing, how could it
>   be added;

I think the present day Debian packages are missing a lot of useful
metadata (I will provide examples in my next letters). Therefore I
would prefer to use the term `metapackage' for a bunch of additional
metadata about a packet, or a packet in a new extended format.

Metapackage in metadistros sense can be pehaps called `distropackage'
or something like this.

Best regards

Janusz

-- 
                     ,   
dr hab. Janusz S. Bien, prof. UW
Prof. Janusz S. Bien, Warsaw Uniwersity
http://www.orient.uw.edu.pl/~jsbien/