should not allow to select (or generate a proper error report) conflicting tasks

[Fabio Massimo Di Nitto]

Hi Colin,

when you do a netboot/netinstall (arch independent the problem here) tasksel allows you to select basically everything. Let say i am a crazy Italian and i want to install ubuntu/kubuntu/xubuntu/edubuntu all at the same time, tasksel will let me select them, but in reality there are some packages in the differnet selections that Conflicts and that basically can't be installed in parallel. That makes the next install step fail.

IMHO it would be nice if tasksel could perform this test before proceeding or generate an error explaning the problem.

Thanks
Fabio

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

It can't detect the problem in advance without a *serious* intelligence upgrade. Perhaps it can report the problem in a better way, though.

[Fabio Massimo Di Nitto (fabbione)]

apt-get install -s -o Debug::NoLocking=True \
                   -o Dir::State::Status=/dev/null \
                   $pkgs \

is a good and very simple start that will at least tell you if the selected tasks will conflict or not. It won't narrow down the exact conflict at task level, but at least we can go back to the menu.
We might want to point the status to the real one in /target since stuff has been already installed.

(Note the -s is to enable simulation)

Fabio

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

It should be possible to pregenerate a list of conflicts in advance using apt-get, if it is possible to make use of that information in the UI.

[Jelmer Jaarsma (jelmer-jaarsma)]

Lately I've encountered this problem as well. I'm using preseeding to install desktop machines with both Gnome and KDE and used to enable both Ubuntu/Kubuntu for that. This worked fine for Gutsy, but in Hardy the two tasks are conflicting unfortunately so I'll have to install either Ubuntu or Kubuntu and add the other packages later on.

[Thomas Hotz (thotz-deactivatedaccount)]

Confirming then...