Support for metapackages

[Iain Lane]

Binary package hint: software-center

Package maintainers often create metapackages to make installation of groups of related packages easier for end-users. This is often the case when an application is split up into several smaller packages to provide more granularity, but a sensible default is desirable.

The software center currently uses the presence of .desktop files (via app-install-data?) to decide which packages to show to users. This can in some circumstances be insufficient. Metapackages should also be shown.

The example I was just made aware of is smuxi. The desktop file and binary are contained within a package (smuxi-frontend-gnome), which is offered up by software-center to users. Other functionality is provided by separate packages, however. While some of these are recommends of -gnome, not all are. Furthermore, the package provides a smuxi metapackage which is supposed to be the most common way of obtaining the packages as it provides the most complete user experience.

software-center should detect and display metapackages in addition to the current .desktop file method. A metapackage can be detected by (a combination of) two heuristics: the word `metapackage' or `meta package' in the description, and the package only having files in /usr/share/doc. This is the approach taken by other tools in use, such as Lintian.

Thanks,
Iain

[Mohamed Amine Ilidrissi (ilidrissi.amine)]

If we wish to support metapackages, we should also support removing all the packages that this metapackage depends on and possibly recommends, in addition to having a .desktop file for that metapackage.

@mpt: suggestions? Do you think metapackages should be supported?

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Iain, thanks for this bug report, and sorry for the slow response.

You say that for Smuxi, "Other functionality is provided by separate packages". What packages in particular are you referring to? As far as I can see, you're probably referring to smuxi-engine-irc and smuxi-engine-twitter. It would make sense for at least the latter to show up as an add-on for "Smuxi IRC Client" (smuxi-frontend-gnome), but it doesn't. That's easily fixed in the Smuxi packaging, so I've reported that as bug 844742.

Do you have any other examples of how metapackages would be useful?

[Iain Lane (laney)]

You can search for "meta package" or "metapackage" in descriptions and see if you think it would make sense to display any of those. I think in most cases a metapackage means that the maintainer has been thoughtful enough to try to provide a convenient bundle of software for users and it would be nice for the software centre to allow this thoughtfulness to be propagated along.