[Mageia-discuss] Suggestions

Kira elegant.pegasus at gmail.com
Tue Oct 26 07:42:46 CEST 2010


在 Tue, 26 Oct 2010 13:22:52 +0800, andre999 <andr55 at laposte.net>寫道:

> I don't quite follow this distinction of programs and packages.
> A package is a file with installation instructions for a program, or a  
> set of closely related programs.  Sometimes a program with many modules  
> is divided into more than one package, but then there are one or more  
> core packages, essential to the installation of the others.
> So maybe some packages would need minimal documentation since they are  
> dependant on a core package (e.g. OpenOffice).
> But if considering installing a package containing a number of closely  
> related programs, wouldn't one want all the contained programs to be  
> documented ?
> Since they would almost necessarily be complementary ?
> And if you install only one program at a time, essentially you are  
> saying that each package contains exactly one program.  So you want 37  
> packages to install Openoffice ?  And you want 4 or 5 packages instead  
> of one for the diff (file comparison) utilities ?
The difference is clear: For most of the time, you would install programs,

not packages. Currently in the RPMDRAKE, libraries are listed,  
localizations

are listed, which is annoying since if you are not programmer, why would  
you

cares about these things? Sure, some would need them for their own purpose,

but most of the time we would only focus on install certain program, not

related libraries/localizations/....etc. They should go into expert mode/

detail mode, not directly exposed to people. This is a usability problem,  
not

about packaging.


>
> By the way, if newbies are scared off by packages, why is the Microsoft  
> environment package oriented ?
> (Even though often a package of numerous programs is referred to as a  
> program.)
>
I think you miss-understand my thought. That's something like task package,

which is not what I was talking about. I meant the packages like  
libktorrent,

which is installed together with ktorrent as the backbone library. It's  
listed

in RPMDRAKE, but in what normal condition would you install it solely?

NO. You install KTorrent, not libktorrent. It should be hidden by RPMDRAKE,

unless you check the option to show all packages. Most of the time, you  
won't

care about what packages installed on your system, you cares about what

"softwares" are installed.


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