[K12OSN] schooltool / k12ltsp-extras

Eric Harrison eharrison at mail.mesd.k12.or.us
Wed Sep 13 19:06:18 UTC 2006


Michael Blinn wrote:
>  In an effort to remove unnecessary (for me) packages, I 'yum erase'd
> schooltool and schoolbell. This also removed 'k12ltsp-extras' for
> dependency (size 0.0MB). k12ltsp-extras sounds kind of important, though
> if I try to install k12ltsp-extras again, the only two packages included
> are schooltool and schoolbell. It is safe to use my system without
> k12ltsp-extras?
> 
> -Michael Blinn
> 

The quick answer: Yes, it is safe to use your system without k12ltsp-extras.


The long answer:


k12ltsp-extras is a "meta" package, it is an empty package that has a
dependency for a group of packages. Basically, this command:

	yum install k12ltsp-extras

is the same as this:

	yum install icemc icewm icewm-l10n icewm-menu-gnome2 icewm-themes
spheres-and-crystals gnome-theme-clearlooks-bigpack schooltool



Meta packages also make it easier to auto-magically add new packages as
part of a group. For K12LTSP 4.2.4EL, for example, the k12ltsp-education
meta package will have "fl_teachertool" as a new dependency. Anyone who
has the k12ltsp-education package installed will pick up the
"fl_teachertool" package when they do a "yum update" sometime after
K12LTSP 4.2.4EL is released. If they didn't have the k12ltsp-education
meta package installed, "yum update" would not install the new
fl_teachertool package.

I hope that makes sense ;-)

-Eric




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