Package groups vs "metapackages"

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 12:53 -0700, Bryan O'Sullivan wrote:
> I've been working recently on bringing Fedora up to snuff as a
> platform to build Haskell software on:
> 
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Haskell#Haskell_Platform_support
> 
> In my ideal world, it would be possible to install all of the
> necessities for decent Haskell development via a single short command
> line. I can see two ways to do this:
>       * Create a "haskell-devel" (or something) package that simply
>         depends on all of the Haskell Platform's component packages.
>         This would have the nice property of being versioned, just as
>         the Haskell Platform itself is.
>       * Create a "Haskell Development" group in comps. This is unknown
>         territory to me: I don't know if it's a good idea, how it
>         would work, how I'd edit it to add new dependencies when the
>         Haskell Platform gets updates, or ... well, anything.
> What's the collective wisdom about the best approach for doing this?

I wondered about this too when I joined, and several people told me
metapackages are generally discouraged in favour of package groups. I
don't know the rationale behind that decision, but that's what I was
told.

-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net