Smart and "virtual" Packages

[Anders F Björklund]

The "comps" and "fink" branches were unmerged from "testing",
since it wasn't really optimal it the way they handled Packages.

So now the Fedora and Fink platforms won't be fully functional,
as they require support for yum groups and fink-virtual-pkgs...


For Fedora, Yum Groups (comps) are used instead of RPM Groups
and RPM Meta Packages and are retrieved with the "repodata".

Examples:
The various desktop environments all have the rpm group
'User Interface/Desktops'. In order to separate between
KDE/GNOME/Xfce/etc, one looks at which yum group it is in
(kde-desktop/gnome-desktop/xfce-desktop, respectively).

In other RPM distributions, they are in separate groups
instead. Like: 'System/GUI/KDE' or Graphical desktop/KDE'

To install something like the Xfce graphic desktop, you
install the XFCE yum group/collection and its requirements.
These requirements are divided into default/required and
optional/conditional, so there are two types of rpm deps.

In other RPM distributions, you install metapackages
instead. Like 'xfce' or 'task-xfce' or '^XFCE' etc.

APT-RPM handles the comps with the Lua plugin system,
so you can use something like "apt-get groupinstall".


For Fink, the fink-virtual-pkgs are "virtual" debs that
are used to provide system dependencies for the packages.

Examples:
Package: darwin
Status: install ok installed
Version: 8.11.1-1
description: [virtual package representing the kernel]
homepage: http://www.finkproject.org/faq/usage-general.php#virtpackage
provides: kernel

Package: gcc4.0
Status: install ok installed
Version: 4.0.1-5367
homepage: http://www.finkproject.org/faq/comp-general.php#gcc2
builddependsonly: true
description: [virtual package representing the gcc 4.0.1 compiler]

These are not real .deb packages, so they need to be provided
by APT/Smart in order to fulfill requirements for installation.



Hopefully these add-ons will be able to return again,
with better implementations, after Smart 1.2 is out...

https://bugs.launchpad.net/smart/+bug/244969 "comps"
https://bugs.launchpad.net/smart/+bug/244962 "fink"

--anders