Maintaining tasks files

[Reinhard Tartler]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 09:49:01 (CEST), Andreas Tille wrote:

> Hi,
>
> after subscribing this list I now get several e-mails about packages I
> just don't know which are obviosely relevent for multimedia issues but I
> just do not feel competent to put into the right task.  Apt-cache told
> me that projectm has for instance a binary package libprojectm-dev which
> could be added to a (not yet existing) task multimedia-dev which might
> collect all those packages which are relevant to package multimedia
> applications (for sure there could be also more fine grained tasks for
> development issues created).
>
> In general I would strongly suggest: Please check out the tasks pages
> whether they are featuring your package and if not at least drop me a
> note to what tasks it should be added.

Well, I think defining these tasks is not easy at all. AFAIUI, the user
is expected to select a task and then *all* packages included in the
task is going to be installed. However, in our multimedia land, we have
both 'consumer' multimedia libraries like codecs, drivers, media
players, and software for multimedia producers. For both areas, we have
several similar software package that users most likely want to select
alternatively, very seldomly together. The 'best' selection of packages
depend of course on the exact requirements of the user, but most likely,
it will not be the full set of available packages.

Andreas, can you perhaps elaborate on your(?) / the idea about these
tasks files and where are they maintained in Debian? The tasksel package
or somewhere more decentrally?

-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4