Ideally I would like something which:
- Allowed me to write a reason for installation of a package or a set of packages.
- Kept track of all changes the installed package made to my system. I would like to see /etc file modifications, user and group changes and file changes overall. And anything important I forgot. :-)
- Allowed me to write a reason for removing a package or a set of packages.
- Allowed me to modify the reasons I gave at a later time. I might have installed a package to begin with just because I wanted to check it out. Then I might find it really useful and have a good reason for keeping it. As the reasons are for documentation and not a diary I'd like to change the original reason "Just testing it out" into "Installed as it offers services x,y,z using a minimal and fast implementation".
- Allowed me to (manually) include the manual steps I needed to perform. Like change that files' contents, and that ones permissions, remove that file & create that file. Basically log commands I perform together with some documentation comments. And tie them to the packages I installed/removed which caused these manual steps to be necessary.
- I could get output from which basically is a description of how to duplicate my system on a freshly installed machine. This means that only the installed/removed packages that differs from the fresh install are shown with their descriptions (still in sequental order as packages may depend upon each other).
Questions
- Does it sound like a good system for documentation? Why? Why not? What can be improved?
- Is there something like this out there already?
- Is it possible to hook into the APT system to gain the necessary level of control to create something like this? Any tips on how?
- Do you have any suggestions on how to implement something like this?
If something like this is not out there already, I might have a try at creating something myself.