RFC: [ITP] Installation Profiles packages

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

As the latest installment in the recent series of major "D'oh!"s, I
realized that the installation profiles I previously proposed for setup
could be initially implemented as special packages with the right
dependences.  This still doesn't absolve us from adding some more
sophisticated support for these in setup (e.g., communicating the user
prerefence about creating desktop icons to them), but it's a start, and
it'll cut down on the "I installed Cygwin, so how come gcc doesn't work"
(and the much more annoying "just install everything, it's only 2 gigs"
answers to those).

IMO, these packages should be in a special new category (I propose the
name "@Profiles" to make setup put this at the top, but I don't know if
setup will parse this correctly).  I've attached a few sample profile
packages for commonly requested configurations with the corresponding
setup.hints.  We could probably concentrate them all in one directory
(thus the '@ ...' lines at the top of the hint files).  All the .tar.bz2
files are the same empty tarball -- it's the setup.hints that are
important.

Comments and other suggestions welcome.  Note that the attached packages
are an initial cut at defining those profiles -- I'm bound to have missed
something.  Also, I'm not proposing to maintain *all* of the profiles,
though I could maintain the ones I've attached, as there isn't too much
work involved.
	Igor
-- 
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     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

If there's any real truth it's that the entire multidimensional infinity
of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. /DA

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