I've recently heard of tasksel, a tool that "installs multiple related packages as a co-ordinated "task" onto your system". What is the difference between using tasksel and installing meta packages via apt-get? What does it do that meta packages can't accomplish?
3 Answers
tasksel
is ancient, ancient history, and is there mainly for historical reasons. Better just to forget about it.
-
Then how come this tasksel screen pops up whenever you install ubuntu server if its now defunct? Nov 11, 2012 at 15:47
Tasksel can't really express complex dependencies that include version comparisons, optional dependencies, alternative packages, conflicts, etc.
To give a simple example: the tasksel task dns-server
installs bind9
, while a meta-package could depend on bind9|pdns-server
(and a bunch of other DNS servers, but this is just an example), which means installing one of the 2 listed packages fulfils the dependency.
one of the reason for using tasksel
is that you don't need tu know the name of installed package (for example SSH Server
vs package openssh-server
)
-
1
-
Software Center isn't available via command line, so it would be useless in server environment– PrawełNov 20, 2010 at 12:16
-
2