Comps, or, Making it Easier for Users to Find Software

[Jeremy Katz]

With FC5 on the way and the advent of the repo-aware replacement for
system-config-packages (pirut), we're now in a much better position for
making it easy for users to gain access to applications.

So, you might ask, what can I do to help?  Well, if you maintain an
application which makes sense for a user to select[1], check out the
comps module and make sure that your package is listed in a reasonable
group in the comps-fe5.xml.in file.  If it's not, feel free to add it
using the following as a template if your package were named "foo":
  <packagereq type="optional">foo</packagereq>
If you think there needs to be a new group, please let me know.

We'll eventually have the file being automatically updated with each
Extras push -- for now, it's a manual process for me to drop the updated
file in.

Jeremy

[1] So, what criteria makes sense here?  In general, it's going to be
applications which show up in the menus somewhere.  Libraries should
almost *never* be explicitly listed and instead pulled in via
dependencies.  Also, most text-mode utilities don't really fit in unless
they have a pretty large established user-base.  Given that the primary
use is with a GUI, selecting a lot of text-mode things make little
sense.  If you have questions as to whether it makes sense or not, feel
free to contact me.