>>>>> "Anthony" == Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes:
Anthony> On Mon, May 07, 2001 at 07:32:10PM -0400, Sam Hartman Anthony> wrote: >> So, I think that support in tools besides tasksel is critical >> to this policy proposal being useful. I don't like the idea of >> having frontend-specific fields being mandated by policy and >> don'tt see a need for tasksel to be a distinguished frontend. >> I understand why apt-get might not want to support or >> reverse-recommends, but I think that the actual frontends >> should support this. Anthony> Remember: the point of tasks is to make the initial Anthony> install simpler, so that people can get started on Debian Anthony> without having to wade through dselect. Yes, that was the original point of tasks. However, tasks are also used today by people who want to get a set of software installed after the initial install. I know many Debian users who expect to be able to do apt-get install task-blah long after the initial install. While I was not involved as a developer at the time this discussion happened the last time, I saw a major advantage of tasks over profiles that I could install new tasks as I found I needed them rather than having to reinstall a system and select a new profile. We will never fully be able to support the users who have grown used to being able to apt-get install tasks; you have convinced me of that. However policy's primary purpose seems to be to document existing practice and I don't think that we are doing that very well by dropping support for the existing practice of usefully adding tasks after the initial install. Yet I understand we have finite time. Would it be reasonable to get tasksel install task-name added as a command line invocation for people to use in scripts and to have the policy text say that frontends that handle recommends should handle tasks? I'm not particularly concerned about the specifics of the text, but I believe we must allow people an option to continue to use tasks in interactive scripts and we should encourage people to support it appropriately. --Sam