Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 12:21:52 +0100 (BST) From: David Marsh <drmarsh@bigfoot.com> To: Nick Hibma <nick.hibma@jrc.it>, FreeBSD-Questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: PKGINFO statistics Message-ID: <XFMail.980714184316.drmarsh@bigfoot.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.95q.980703140008.16968z-100000@elect8>
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On 03-Jul-98 Nick Hibma wrote: > > >It sends me a list of all the packages you have installed on the >machine >you execute the command on. > It's probably not really worth my doing this, as I'm a fairly new user and don't have very much exciting installed yet.. :-( > >Reason to do this: > >In a discussion the idea came up to see if profiles for the usage of >packages could be found. If a large number of these pkg_info lists are >retrieved we can try to find relations between each two installed >packages. > >This could be used to offer predefined profiles to the user when >installing packages. This avoids the user to having to wade through >the >entire list of packages when deciding what to install. The directory >structure present in the /usr/ports directory already provides a means >to do this but this could be improved upon. I suspect that everybody probably has such a diverse range of uses for FreeBSD that it might not be possible to agree on a selection of 'must-have' applications. >See for a more elaborate discussion the message below. >======== >>From nick.hibma@jrc.it Fri Jul 3 13:34:37 1998 >Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 19:01:14 +0200 (MET DST) >From: Nick Hibma <nick.hibma@jrc.it> >To: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> >Cc: FreeBSD hackers mailing list <hackers@freebsd.org> >Subject: Re: 2.2.6 CD-ROM : Package dependencies up the creek ? > [NB: various snippages] > >Enhancing the profiles with relations makes it even more sexy. For >example, installing MSQL on a development system that also has perl >installed could trigger the adding perl5-msql. Having selected X and >ghostscript makes it invitable to install ghostview as well. An idea That sounds like a potentially useful idea.But in order to prevent 'disk bloat' that appears to be a concern of some people, it might be just as simple to include extra information in the ports descriptions, along the lines of: This is blah, which does this this thing. If you also have bloop, which does that thing, you might also like to install blah-bloop which interfaces the two together to do this and that and the other... This would give a useful tip, but would allow the user the choice as to whether they felt they needed that extra application or not. This brings me to another point about the wide range of applications available. I just don't know what's there! Obviously I have the ports directories, so can plough my way through to find out a little about the various applications which have been ported, but I feel it might be a useful inclusion to the FreeBSD website to highlight some or all (!) of the ports pointing out their particular good points or useful features, to allow the user to make a better comparison before deciding what to install. Or perhaps this could be done by including direct links to the master websites of those applications, which presumably would have full descriptions, screenshots and tips etc. I'm still at the stage of knowing roughly what I want/need, but don't really know what to choose from. For example, my current area of interest is in web-preprocessing tools. I've previously used htp on my Amiga ;-) and am now in the process of investigating wml from the ports collection. I would find it useful to have a comparison of features and usage, etc, of similar applications on the website, to allow me to choose which one meets my needs best. Perhaps this could be a small feature in the FreeBSD-newsletter? Select one type of application each issue and highlight the different alternatives which are available? (Of course, there's nothing to stop me fetching all the files and installing each package and playing with them, but it's sometimes nice to have the benefit of the knowledge of experienced users to help make a decision). Dave. --- David Marsh,drmarsh@bigfoot.comPLEX | http://squelch.home.ml.org/ | Glasgow/Glaschu, Scotland. *If urgent, phone: +44 141 400-0577*| > CYCLEWAY: cycle activism GB/IE: http://squelch.home.ml.org/cycleway/ < > includes bikes on public transport, & cycle organisation directories < To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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