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What is necessary if we are to keep dpkg/dselect

I see that maintainer sentiment is still toward keeping dpkg/dselect.

My major problems with dpkg/dselect are:

1. In one whole year nobody has been able to come up with a simpler
   replacement for dselect. This is not because a simpler replacement
   isn't possible, it's because dselect is wired into the dpkg internals
   and nobody's managed to isolate those internals into library form and
   document them. The user friendliness problems of dselect are not
   necessary to the operation of the system. They should be repaired.

2. Ian Jackson is not able to put in sufficient time on dpkg/dselect,
   and acts to discourage others from working on it. Thus the bug list grows,
   and the items on the TO-DO list remain untouched. When items are worked on,
   it's not always the ones with high priority - for example dselect is ignored
   while argument rages about a maintainer tool used by at most 50 people.

I'm not satisfied with having problems like this that continue to be
unrepaired for years. If the developers can put together a team and start
to address the problems in dpkg/dselect, we can keep it. If it's going to be
the status quo, we should drop it before the problems get worse.

So, I expect to see several changes:

A. An organized team of people, under Ian Jackson or someone else, who
   distribute the work on dpkg/dselect between themselves. This means
   that Ian Jackson should perhaps be doing design, but not a majority
   of the work.

B. A prioritized list of tasks for the package system, agreed upon by
   the maintainers. Items like dselect should have higher priority
   than things like deb-make.

C. A sincere effort to implement a category-selection tool to replace
   dselect for the casual user. A schedule for this effort, and regular
   progress reports.

If I don't see some progress in these directions, about two months will go
by and then we'll bring up this same argument again. I'm going to stick to
this issue until I see progress or we drop dpkg.

	Bruce
--
Bruce Perens K6BP   Bruce@Pixar.com   510-215-3502
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