Subject: Dpkg feature request

From: [email-masked] (Bruce Perens)
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 96 08:10 PDT

Tres Hofmeister wrote:
: 	Can someone point me towards info. on how one can duplicate the
: packages installed on one Debian system on another?  Going through
: dselect by hand seems just a bit too tedious for multiple
: installations...  Thanks.

From: [email-masked] (Heiko Schlittermann)
> Just install the base system from the first 3 floppies and
> copy the /var/lib/dpkg/status file from the `master' system, mount
> the distribution somewhere on the `slave', cd to the distribution
> toplevel and run `dpkg -iGROEB'.  Never tried this, so
> someone else?

I think this is _almost_ right. What you need is to copy the dpkg status
file in a way that marks the packages as selected _but_not_installed_ on
the second system. It would take a script to do this, because you don't want
to take anything that got installed in the base and mark it as "selected but
not installed". However, having the
capability to make lists of selections and pass them around would be nice.
Thus, I'll ask Ian Jackson. How about three flags to dpkg?

	--select package-name [package-name ...]
		Selects a list of packages for later installation.
	--deselect package-name [package-name ...]
		De-selects a list of packages for later removal.
	--list-selected
		Lists selected packages in a way suitable for inclusion in a list
		passed to --select.

There may well be flags to do this now, but I've missed them.
This would allow you to set up the selections via a shell script or something,
and then start dselect to fine-tune what you have selected.

	Thanks

	Bruce

---

From: [email-masked] (Heiko Schlittermann)
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 07:56:42 +0200 (MET DST)

Bruce Perens wrote:
: 
: Thus, I'll ask Ian Jackson. How about three flags to dpkg?
: 
: 	--select package-name [package-name ...]
: 		Selects a list of packages for later installation.
: 	--deselect package-name [package-name ...]
: 		De-selects a list of packages for later removal.
: 	--list-selected
: 		Lists selected packages in a way suitable for inclusion in a list
: 		passed to --select.
: 

I'd vote for these flags too ... (It would it make possible to create
lists for somewhat more customized systems (TeXt Processing, Network
Server, Software Development ...).) 

    Heiko
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From: "David M. Cooke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 07:29:32 -0400

> and then start dselect to fine-tune what you have selected.

This is a great idea!  Its exactly what I've been wishing for.  I'd be
able to get one system installed right and then cruise through the
installation of the other 29 systems here.

It would also be nice to have an option in dselect to pick this method
of selection.  Then if minor tweaks need to be made to what's selected
they can be done in the normal manor before proceeding with the install.
But this is just cosmetic.  The options you suggest would make me very
happy.

-- 
________________________________________________________________________
David M. Cooke                                   [email-masked]

---

From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Aug 96 14:20 BST

Bruce Perens writes ("Dpkg feature request"):
...
> and then start dselect to fine-tune what you have selected.

I've implemented --get-selections and --set-selections in dpkg 1.3.9
which will be released some time this weekend.

--get-selections produces a list of lines each with a package name and
wanted state.  By default it lists all the packages; you can specify
package names or patterns too.

--set-selections reads such a list and updates the wanted state for
each one in it.

You can do what `dpkg --select <package>' would do with
`echo <package> install | dpkg --set-selections'.

Ian.

---

From: [email-masked] (Bruce Perens)
Date: Sat, 24 Aug 96 12:31 PDT

From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
> `echo <package> install | dpkg --set-selections'.

Thanks! This is all we need for a "broad category" tool that would allow
us to select, for example "development system". That sounds like another
good project for a shell hacker.

	Bruce