On 05/11/2007, at 17:58, matthew sporleder wrote:

> On 11/5/07, Julio M. Merino Vidal <jmerino@ac.upc.edu> wrote:
>> On 05/11/2007, at 14:14, Greg Troxel wrote:
>>
>>> I looked in pkgsrc.txt, and while there is general "split vs.  
>>> options"
>>> discussion, there is nothing that speaks against options in
>>> meta-packages.  An option in gnome-base to drop a dependency seems
>>> less
>>> troublesome than an option that changes behavior, because one can  
>>> just
>>> add the dependency later with the same result, except in how
>>> dependencies are registered.
>>>
>>> Joerg has expressed that options in meta-packages seem unclean or
>>> improper somehow.  Can anyone articulate why?  Does anyone else  
>>> object
>>> to adding a smb/samba option?
>>
>> I don't think adding the option there is any worse than adding it
>> somewhere else (as long as it stays enabled by default).  But then,
>> the meta-packages could end up being just a long list of options so
>> that you'd tune every package in it -- because, some times, they are
>> just that: a list of mostly-independent packages.
>
>
> Aren't meta pkg's just a hack around not having enough options?

Hrm no.  Meta packages are a convenient way to make some well-known  
sets of software available to users.  E.g. GNOME can be seen as a  
huge program composed of many different components, and those  
components are defined by what the GNOME project distributes as a  
GNOME release.

Some other packages are not defined by external entities, though, so  
we are free to define them as what we think is a good subset of  
packages for a specific task.

How does that map to the lack of options?

-- 
Julio M. Merino Vidal <jmerino@ac.upc.edu>