Some short comments at the end. Please feel free to ignore. > On Sat, 2007-09-22 at 11:24 -0300, Alexandre Moreira wrote: >> I've read this bug and noticed that a common problem many users have >> in this list is the idea of having -dev, -doc or -whatever packages >> that need to be fetched. >> >> What if we could add a way that the -dev, -doc, -* packages are really >> sub-packages, instead of a different package. And one could have a >> list of standardized sub packages he wants to always install ? >> >> That way (if we can find a simple way of doing this) a user could set >> a pacman config flag that says it always want to install, even when >> not directly needed by some dependency, so a user that wants all the >> devs can add the dev option and have it behave (with split packages) >> just like it is now. >> >> I would surely like having split packages but I have to agree that >> many users will be unhappy with having to fetch different packages for >> dev and stuff like that. >> >> I just believe we should investigate more the idea of true >> sub-packages (much like in Windows' .msi files, the way you can >> install parts of a software) instead of simply generating more >> packages without real connection between them. > > +1 > > This sounds like a good way of handling this issue. I hated the dev > packages in ubuntu and it was one of the reasons I started searching > for a new distro. I would hate to see -dev packages but if it has to be > done I would be for this idea. That is if it's possible. > > Jackson >
Hello to Jackson, Alexandre, and the gang; Just one users comment after having read through this thread -> Split packages made Mandrake/Mandriva a big mess. In the early days of Arch the philosophy was that arch was not for everyone AND that things should be as "KISS" as possible. Debian is a big mess because of their *needlessly* complicated/non-intuitive methods of packaging. I could go on and on with other examples as the list is quite long of distros that started out great and became tiresome to package for or to use. I *hope* that I will not have to go looking for another distro because Arch has morphed into one of the ones I left because it became too difficult and time consuming to work with. (I even left the distro that I was a principle at for these very same reasons, so I am sensitive to when distros have the potential for loosing sight of their goals and principles.) SO...I am asking that you guys think THREE times about any changes you make that could make Arch go too far from the KISS principle it started with and remember that Arch never had the goal of being the distro for everyone's needs. This IS just my opinion and YMMV of course. Very best regards; Bob Finch Liviu Librescu - În veci pomenirea lui. (May his memory be eternal.) _______________________________________________ arch mailing list arch@archlinux.org http://archlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/arch
