> The problem with adding a development task has always been, and > continues to be, that people do not use the same tools for development, > and that there are no good defaults beyond basic C-style development > tools. mind you a similar thing applies to say the file server task, there are at least 3 different types of server that someone could want that would fit the "file server" discription and its not at all clear which ones will be installed.
I personally belive that tasksel needs a major overhaul and is practically useless in its present form, what i think is really needed is a set of categories each with a number of entries so you'd say have a desktop category (with gnome desktop, kde desktop, xfce desktop etc), a webserver category (with basic websever, lamp webserver etc), a fileserver category (with samba,nfs and ftp options), a development category (with basic development, kernel development, debian package development, java development etc) and so on. > This is why #266702 is still open. The fact that those default > C development tools are no longer in standard still doesn't make > "development" a sensible task. It's not the same class of thing as > running a web server or using a desktop, both of which can be > accomplished well, if not perfectly for everyone, with a predetermined > list of software. maybe development is the wrong name but even a task that just installed build-essential and the kernel headers would imo make things a lot easier for those stuck with unusual hardware or wanting to compile software that is not packaged off the bat (its not at all obvous to newbies that the package they need to make basic compilation work in one step is called build-essential and its pretty horrible getting compilation to work one package at a time).
