ubuntu-desktop metapackage?

[Colin Watson]

On Thu, Sep 23, 2004 at 01:42:58PM -0700, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> A brief IRC discussion started about this due to ubuntu-sounds.  Currently,
> no one has ubuntu-sounds installed, and it's not entirely appropriate for an
> existing package to depend on it, so users who are upgrading will not get
> the sounds.  This is either a bug or a feature.
> 
> Considering it a bug, there are some possible solutions:
> 
> - Add a script to ubuntu-base, of the sort which would be used as part of
>   the woody->warty upgrade process, which lets the user say "give me the
>   current ubuntu desktop stuff", and does so
> 
> - Create an ubuntu-desktop metapackage which depends on everything in the
>   DesktopSeed, so that when it is upgraded, new packages are installed.
>   This is particularly nice because of the change semantics: if the user
>   removes one of the desktop packages, ubuntu-desktop is uninstalled,
>   and the user's changes are preserved.  So, users who accept the
>   default package selection get new ones automatically, and others
>   are left alone.

The problem about the second is that when people try to remove a single
package that's in Desktop, their package manager tells them "removing
ubuntu-desktop as well", and they panic. This happens a lot with
metapackages in Debian, and it's one of the reasons Task: headers were
invented instead.

I like the first option myself. It could just be:

  #! /bin/sh
  aptitude install '~tubuntu-desktop'

-- 
Colin Watson                                    [cjwatson at canonical.com]