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From rpm-list-admin@freshrpms.net  Thu Jul 25 14:37:11 2002

Once upon a time, Brian wrote :
>
>     More information on that slick "gstreamer-universe" thing.
>
>     Go to this page: http://gstreamer.net/releases/redhat
>
>     They seem to have declared a a package called "gstreamer-universe" as
>     a collection of files.  This is brilliant; what we need to do is get
>     someone with a Gnome2-universe and we'll be set, aye?  :)
>
>     Isn't that a cool idea?
This is called "pseudo-packages" or "meta-packages" and Debian has been
using them for ages. I think Mandrake also makes these kind of empty
packages.
Anyway, their use has been discussed here a while back, and personally
although I do agree that they can be useful at times, I don't really like
them. For me it's more of an ugly "hack" than anything else, and I'd
approve completely a system that would enable to install/remove entire
categories of software... but not if achieved by building empty packages.
Also, you can trivially do "apt-get install <metapackage>", but removing
all that it installed is a bit less trivial, and could be implemented in a
trivial and clean fashion if using some functionality meant to do this.
Matthias
--
Matthias Saou                                World Trade Center
-------------                                Edificio Norte 4 Planta
System and Network Engineer                  08039 Barcelona, Spain
Electronic Group Interactive                 Phone : +34 936 00 23 23
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