README.supported

Task support for synaptic
-------------------------


Synaptic works on quite a few distributions. To make support for the
various task systems easy synaptic needs a helper application called
"tasksel" (or any other helper that can be speficified with 
"-o Synaptic::taskHelperProg=prog"). It has to support the following
commands:

--list-tasks: returns a list of the format
              "$installed $taskname\t$task-short-description" 
	      where $installed can be 'i' (installed) or 'u' (uninstalled)

--task-packages $task: list the packages included in the given task
                       this option can be used more than once for
                       different tasks

--task-desc $task: print a long description about the given task


Examples:

$ tasksel --list-tasks
database-server SQL database
i desktop Desktop environment
u dns-server      DNS server
u file-server     File server
u mail-server     Mail server
u print-server    Print server
u web-server      Web server

$ tasksel --task-packages dns-server --task-packages print-server
bind9
bind9-doc
dlint
dnsutils
lwresd
cupsys
cupsys-bsd
cupsys-client
cupsys-driver-gimpprint
foomatic-db-engine
foomatic-db-hpijs
foomatic-filters-ppds
foomatic-gui
samba
samba-doc
smbclient
smbfs
swat

$ tasksel --task-desc desktop           
This task provides basic "desktop" software, including a variety of session managers, file managers and web browsers. It incorporates both the GNOME and KDE desktops, and provides a display manager which lets the user choose between the two.