In article <Pine.GSO.4.01.9809301731300.10667-100000@alpine.unicast.com>,
Jim Wise  <jwise@unicast.com> wrote:
> I originally looked at the possibility of package sets being meta-pkgs,
> and I'm not convinced it's a good idea.  The main problem I foresee is
> that users will want to be able to remove a package set at a later date.
> Removing a meta-pkg doesn't accomplish this, and it's not clear to me

meta-pkgs have this problem. It needs to be adressed anyway, so I don't
see any reason to invent this new, different mechanism that adds
complexity.

> that it should.

Yes, it should.

> Another concern about meta-pkgs is that several people, most recently
> Jonathan in his summary of past discussion on this issue, have requested
> that the system still be distributable as a relatively small number of
> files, which can be downloaded and verified easily by hand.  Package

The downside being that people may have to download a lot of data that
they don't want. Keep separate pkgs in separate files. People who want
to download stuff by hand can expect to have it a bit harder than those
who use the nice install tools. Such is life.

Or organize the packages in subdirectories on the ftp server, and
someone who wants to grab whole groups at once can grab <dir>.tar

> meta-pkg, I am left guessing as to what other packages I need to
> download until I actually unpack the meta-pkg and try to install it.

The tool should handle this for you.

I envision sysinst presenting a nice collapsable treeview of the
hierarchy of packages. The user checks what they want and it gets
downloaded automaticly.