Wed Oct 12 15:06:56 2022 UTC

The five collections

Introduction

They are a lot of synonyms for defining a set of packages in the informatics jargon.

Under NuTyX, a set of packages is held in a collection.

They are 5 officials collections on NuTyX.

A collection includes 3 fundamental properties:

  • Independent
  • Hierarchy
  • Interdepencies between them
Even if these properties could look contradictory, we will see in this tutorial why they are justified.

Definition

Under NuTyX, a collection is a set of recepts and binaries packages. This set provide certain functionalities. These functionalities are organised as follows:
  • Librairies and utilities for a base system
  • Librairies and utilities for a command line interface (cli)
  • Librairies and utilities for a graphical user interface (gui)
  • Extra librairies and utilities for a command line interface (cli-extra)
  • Extra librairies and utilities for a graphical user interface (gui-extra)
At the moment, some of the most common graphical interfaces are available in gui-extra collection:
  • GNOME
  • BUDGIE
  • CINNAMON
  • XFCE4
  • KDE5
  • MATE
  • LXDE
  • LXQT
  • ENLIGHTENMENT

Collections management via cards

Because of their concept, each collection contains it's own meta-data files. When adding / removing a package from a collection, only the meta-data files of this collection will need to be modified. This property offers maximum flexibility to the users and to the Package manager.

Collections hierachy

The hierachy of collections is an important concept.

Here the symbol "->" should be interpreted as "depends on"

Here is the fundamental rule:

cli-extra -> cli -> base

gui-extra -> gui -> cli -> base

With this well established rule, the following concept is defined:

  • A package from the base collection can only use dependencies from the same base collection.
  • A package from the cli collection can only use dependencies from base or cli collections.
  • A package from the cli-extra collection can only use dependencies from base or cli collections.
  • A package from the gui collection can only use dependencies from base, cli or gui collections.
  • A package from the gui-extra collection, including all available graphical interfaces on NuTyX, can only use dependencies from base, cli or gui collections.

Interdependencies

The NuTyX collections are interdependent in the following ways:
  • base: The base collection is the set of a minimum base system, it will always be needed. All the others collections depend on the base collection.
  • cli: The cli collection contains all the libraries and applications used by a command line interface.

    Only the base collection is a dependencie of the cli collection.

  • gui: The gui collection contains all the libraries and applications used by a graphical interface. The base and cli collections are dependencies of the gui collection.
  • cli-extra: The cli-extra collection contains applications used by a command line interface.

    The base and cli collections are the dependencies of the gui collection.

  • gui-extra: The gui-extra collection contains apllications used by a graphical interface.

    The base, cli and gui are the dependencies of the gui-extra collection.

The groups of collection

A. The base system collection

The collection consisting of the base system is:

  • base

B. The core system collections

The collections consisting of the core system are:

  • cli
  • gui

C. The Extra collections

The 'extra' collections are:

  • cli-extra
  • gui-extra

And now ?

Collections have no more secrets for you. Now is the time to try to compile in an isolated chroot.