Packaging improvements

[Michael Vogt]

On Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 08:55:50AM +0100, Vestnici Vestnici wrote:
[..]
> Generalizing the idea of "customizable meta packages" I would add also "the
> possibility for the user to select a set of packages which he likes to have
> installed, and those to be written in his /home partition". The idea is that
> if the person upgrades to the next version of Ubuntu he should be able to
> very easily restore the state of the previous installation. I know that this
> can be achieved with a small script with several lines of apt-get, but it is
> not always the most user-friendly format.
[..]

Synaptic has some of this functionality already. You can select
"File/Save changes" and then click the checkbox "Save full state". It
will save all your installed packages to a file and can re-read that
selection later. It's mostly useful for backup purposes, but may be
useful in your case as well.

This sort of workaround will be no longer needed for upgrades in
Dapper. It will have a dist-upgrade tool that will make moving from
one release to the next much easier. It will preserve all package
selections on your system (as far as it can do this) during the
upgrade. 

Cheers,
 Michael


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Linux is not The Answer. Yes is the answer. Linux is The Question. - Neo