Description Nick Schermer 2007-01-16 15:42:32 CET

It would be nice if there was a way to allow users to select optional packages in the installer. Some ideas:

1) A separate page with check boxes to enable/disable a packages. In the XML file this can look like:
    <package type="optional">
      <name></name>
      <title></title>
    </package>

   If this is used, there should also be a way to check the dependencies this package needs, so not very easy I guess.

2) More flexible dependency checks, if a dependencies was not found, some of the packages are skipped. The users should be informed about this, maybe while compiling (This package was skipped because of missing dependencies...) or in the dependencies check page.

   <dependency type="package" optional="true">
     <name>libxml-1.0</name>
   [...]
   <package>
     <name></name>
     <title></title>
     <dependencies>
       <dependency>libxml-1.0</dependency>
     </dependencies>
   </package>

3) An option to skip a package group:

    <option default="disabled">
      <title>Gnome crap</title>
      <description>
        Enable this option if you want plugins that need Gnome dependencies.
      </description>
      <action case="enabled">
        I2T_GNOME_DEPENDENCIES="true";
        export I2T_GNOME_DEPENDENCIES;
      </action>
      <action case="disabled">
        I2T_GNOME_DEPENDENCIES="false";
        export I2T_GNOME_DEPENDENCIES;
      </action>
    </option>

   and then some way to skip a package when a bash script exits with 1:

   <pre-action stage="before_everything_else">
     if test x"${I2T_GNOME_DEPENDENCIES}" = x"false"; then
       echo "Skipping the package"
       exit 1;
     fi
   </pre-action>

Those are all just ideas and personally I think the 2nd idea works best (from users point of view).