hi I am a Debian fanatic (but not yet a mantainer... I have no time)
I just read the document about "the future featueres of APT" I have always thought that I would love to have one feature that I now describe as you propose , APT should manage groups of packets in a more flexible way than the presernt "main/* non-free/* ecc" Indeed there should be groups named "basilar installation" "simple small X terminal" "gcc development" "WWW server machine" : this is what ordinary people would expect from Debian (or, any OS) all the bove could be thought of as "groups proposed by Debian", and are static, from the user view point. What I would propose is that there should be also "dynamic groups defined the user", I will call them "user labels". To exemplify, these are example of "user's label" work, study, amusement, trial, dependency, development They should be chosen , and attached, by the user to the package ; in particular when s/he installs/uninstall it Whats the catch? suppose that you want to try a new package : when you install it, you mark it as "trial" ; supp.that dpkg tell you that you need to there are some other packages to be installed (mostly, libraries) if you accept, apt marks them as "dependency" when you at a certain point want to install another package , and do not have disk space, you ask apt for a list of "trial" pkgs and delete some of them ; if it is not enough, you pass to the "amusemnt" ecc in particular, there shoudl be a direct command , lets call it "unneeded dependency removal" that removes all files that where installed because of dependency needs but that are not needed anymore: this one I would really love Note that to have the above command, you need to label the pkgs at installation, and then it may be interesting to extend the use of these labels as above so, I send this email to debian-devel... if the idea is accepted, it may be added in the list of specifications for APT thanks a.Mennucc1 -- -- Legal Warning: Anyone sending me unsolicited/commercial email WILL be charged a $100 proof-reading fee. Do NOT send junk email to me - consider this an official notice: "By US Code Title 47, Sec.227(a)(2)(B), a computer/modem/printer meets the definition of a telephone fax machine. By Sec.227(b)(1)(C), it is unlawful to send any unsolicited advertisement to such equipment. By Sec.227(b)(3)(C), a violation of the aforementioned Section is punishable by action to recover actual monetary loss, or $500, whichever is greater, for each violation."
