> Might it be possible to include fewer packages in each profile and then > present the user with a list of additional packages that might be of > interest to them given that they have chosen this particular profile? > Something like "You have installed the Scientific Workstation profile. The > following additional packages may be of interest ..."
a possibility i considered: divide user-space (i use the term loosely here. things that wouldn't be considered user-space by some, such as the interpreters section, count) packages into heirarchical groups (structure identical or similar to the debian menus, possibly?). have a level wherein the user selects any of these he wants; it will be easy to skip those things he obviously doesn't want (i can safely skip Applications/Ham-Radio and such things). this would save a *lot* of time, especially for anal people like me who actually read all two to three thousand package descriptions (really. initially installing hamm took me all weekend). any dependencies are autoselected, so i don't have to spend hours looking through libweird-2.3, libweird-2.3-dev, libweird2.3-dbg, libweird2.3-doc, libweird4.2, libweird4.2-dev, libweird4.2-dbg, libweird4.2-doc, ad infinitum (or at least ad nauseam). according to policy i should be able to just install all the optional things and then look at extra iff i want something really specialized, but that really doesn't scale too well. --phouchg