debian package browser

[Erich Schubert]

Hi,

> There might be quite a few... but if you sort them by cardinal (or
> alphabetic order, you could leave the choice) it might be very
> useful though. At least it would be interesting to have
> the possibility of displaying all of them, even if a minimal subset
> (based on your heuristics) is displayed by default.

Well, they are kind of. These yellow bars are "bottom-level-subgroups".
Packages with the exact same tags are sorted alphabetically in these
groupings.

In fact i would just need to change a number in my perl script - or pass
that number by a cgi variable - to achieve the behaviour you suggested.
I'm not sure if it is actually usefull, unless you want to actually view
the tags.

You could also install synaptic-debtags. IIRC that does build all
subgroups, not hiding small ones like my does.

> So the goal is to have approximately the same number of packages in
> subgroups as the number of "flat" packages displayed.

No, the goal is to keep the "flat" number below a treshhold like 20
packages. As long as this is not fulfilled, a subgroup is formed by the
following rule:
For all matching packges not yet in a subgroup, their tags are counted.
the tag with most packages, but not above ~80% of them (to avoid
unneccessary depth in the tree) forms a new subgroup, removing matching
packages from the "remaining" set.

This "look only at packages not yet in a subgroup" will avoid nested
subgroups, such as "ip networking" included in "network and
communication" - iff an "network and communication" subgroup is formed,
there won't be an "ip networking" subgroup.

> I think the result is not always the best strategy. Suppose you know
> exactly what kind of functionnality you're looking for (and that's
> most of the interest of this interface)... then you're often forced to
> wander through the "flat" list of packages, and sort out many packages
> which don't correspond to what you're looking for.

It's often easier to check a list of 10 packages than checking 5
subgroups for 2 packages each.

> I think that my search would more efficient with a constant strategy.
> Anyway, one can provide both in the future, like I said.

As long as you know exactly what you need and that there is a tag for
it. The package browser aims for people not knowing that.
Others could just have entered IDS into apt-cache search.

Greetings,
Erich Schubert
-- 
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