[lug] Personal 'layer'

[Nate Duehr]

Scott Rohling wrote:
> Great idea about grabbing the package listing.. 

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch-package.en.html

See section 6.4.9 to do it correctly.  Must include both package 
selections and debconf selections on Debian-based derivatives.

Calling out "dselect-upgrade" now that most people don't use dselect 
anymore (I always liked it) is interesting, though -- wonder if it 
really matters.  It definitely used to... apt-get and dselect had subtly 
different methods of dealing with dependencies that used to screw you 
over badly (yep, that's Linux!) if you used both or tried to mix and 
match... or worse, just trusted them both to do the right thing.

Oh well... it was a great way to learn how to get myself out of 
dependency hell, but I wouldn't recommend it for anyone interested in 
getting other things done with their computer for a while.  Sarge to 
Etch was cleaner than Potato to Sarge... so it got better over time... 
apt-get wasn't out of "dangerous beta testing" stage yet when I started 
playing with Debian.

Now everyone uses it and dselect is long-forgotten.  Aptitude is also 
nice, but again -- subtle differences in how it handles some dependencies.

Since other distros AFAIK don't have a debconf equivalent, you're stuck 
backing up all of /etc in most cases and picking through the backup for 
the files you want.

No package installation metadata for you!!  :-)

Or maybe there's other ways.  Afficionados of those distros can speak to 
what the equivalent is in their favorite flavor of the month...

Nate