Re: Proposal for a new package relationship option

[Chris Gray <cgray@nowonder.com>]

>>>>> "Marcus" == Marcus Brinkmann <Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de> writes:

    Marcus> I don't know gnus, so I don't know what your specific
    Marcus> problem was, but if it was the default configuration at
    Marcus> fault, then it is probably a bug.

I filed a bug and was basically told that it's not really one since
there's no way to discourage people from having a package.  Besides what
gnus already has: a little note in the description of the package.

    Marcus> I don't think we are including cases here where having a
    Marcus> special configuration of one package causes problems for
    Marcus> some other packages. There is an arbitrary examples of
    Marcus> such cases. We can only consider the default configuration
    Marcus> (or the configuration created by special tools like
    Marcus> debconf).

Exactly.  gnus in its default configuration will not be usable with tm
in its default configuration.  But that isn't really the point.  The
point is that if there had been a 

Discourages: tm

or 

Recommends: !tm 

line in the output of "apt-cache show gnus", I would have known how to
handle the situation a bit more easily.  This is a specific case but I
am sure that there are many more.  The second option would probably be
an easier option to add.  It is just a small enhancement of the
syntax of the recommends line.

Cheers,
Chris