Bug#543256: Make installing recommends optional
On Wednesday 26 August 2009, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote:
> Shouldn't they actually be Depends if they are really required for a
> working system? I don't see why you want to special case some packages.
You'd have to take that up with the maintainers of the packages. But for
the two cases I mentioned there's already been *loads* of discussion.
For initramfs-tools for example busybox is only _not_ wanted in a very
limited number of use-cases, but to allow for those use-cases it cannot
be a Depends. Omitting it in D-I installs would mean users would have
severely limited options to debug boot problems, which is IMO
irresponsible _even_ if they indirectly chose it themselves because that
consequence of the "no Recommends" choice is almost impossible to
predict, and also impossible to correct just when you'd need to.
> If ppl don't want recommends they should really not get any recommends
> and decide for themselves if they do want to install these additional
> usefull packages.
In general I agree completely, but there are always exceptions and an
distro installer is IMO the one place where it is justified to have
exceptions. There are other places where we do somewhat similar things in
situations where following the general rules by the letter would simply
leave users with completely unexpected/undesired results.
> IMO you can't have both, no recommends and everything that is generally
> usefull to have but not a dependency.
Again, I agree in general, but I don't think e.g. not installing busybox
is a realistic option.
Cheers,
FJP
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