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Olivier Lalonde
Asked: 2010-11-21 03:31:26 +0800 CST

Why does tasksel exist when there are already meta packages?

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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?

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package-management apt tasksel

3 Answers

  1. 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.

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  2. Best Answer

    tasksel is ancient, ancient history, and is there mainly for historical reasons. Better just to forget about it.

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  3. 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)

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