[Fedora-packaging] meta-package guideline needed ?

[Jonathan Underwood]

2009/1/12 Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net>:
>
>
> Le Lun 12 janvier 2009 14:49, Jonathan Underwood a écrit :
>
>> My perception (which may be incorrect) is that the general use case
>> for meta packages is to simplify the installation of a group of
>> subpackages of one package. Whereas the use case for comps groups
>> seems presently more targeted towards installation of a larger set of
>> packages which are often not subpackages.
>
> Just because a comps group can easily handle packages from different
> origin does not mean you should not use it for subpackages generated
> from the same srpm.

Sure, agreed.

A key difference though is that other packages can't Require a comps
group, but they can Require a metapackage. I can see why that could be
considered bad practice.

Also, using comps groups for the metapackage use case I outlined would
lead to many more compsgroups, themselves much smaller than the
presently existing comps groups.

Perhaps we need another concept - collections and groups, where
collections is roughly what we currently call comps groups (large
package sets with a big overall functionality payload like a desktop
environment etc) and comps groups which are primarily for pulling in a
series of subpackages. This would lose the ability for a metapackge to
be Required now. But perhaps requiring a metapackage is bad practice
anyway.

J.