tsarna@endicor.com (Ty Sarna) writes:

[argument for meta-pkging]

>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.


Beleive me, I do understand this vision.

I'm also reporting scenarios presented by several developers who made
very cogent cases that, _for sysinst_ a myriad of little files is
simply not the right way to go.

The issue of ``packaging'' (_sensu_ shrinkwrap, of how many individual
files are in a distribution) was beaten to death once before, and the
consenus then was that the advantages of fine-grained ``packaing'
(less wasted b/w for those who want part of a set) are outweighed by
the simplicity advantages of a coarser-grained "packaging".

Sysinst can still give this nice, collabsible -- but collapsed by
default! -- view of the tree.  It should.  It will.

unless we want to go over the argument once again (i dont), I really
think we should take as a given that "pkgset" files will be at the
same granularity as the existing .tgz sets.

Jim's words, 
     ``downloaded and verified easily _by hand_''
captures the requirement very nicely.


(Its not kosher to repost the discussion itself, but I can check
whether someone from Core voiced an opinion when we discussed sysinst
extensions.  I'm not sure, but I think someone did...)