Re: Proposal for a new package relationship option
On Fri, Nov 24, 2000 at 11:21:13PM -0500, Chris Gray wrote:
> Exactly. gnus in its default configuration will not be usable with tm
> in its default configuration.
Without knowing more about this, I would say that this is a bug. Either they
should conflict, or this problem should be resolved so that they are
"usable" (I don't know what this means for gnus and tm).
> But that isn't really the point.
It is. Documenting such conflicts is okay, but resolving them is much better
and preferred.
> 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.
No, you wouldn't. You'd just know that there is a problem, but not what to
do about it.
> This is a specific case but I
> am sure that there are many more.
Indeed there are, and they are resolved by other means. For example, only
one window manager can be the system wide default, but this was resolved by
using the alternatives mechanism. I think the same goes for the various xdm's.
They conflict, but someone could probably make use of several of them if he is
clever. But until Debian enables the user to conveniently configure this at
configuration time, they are conflicting.
I understand why you think that this kludge would be useful to you now.
But I think that this "solution" only looks more simple, and will not really
solve any problem whatsoever. It only documents problems, but doesn't fix
them.
I think I have said all I can say about this. There may be cases where
a discouragement really solves a problem, but I can't imagine one right now,
and I have not seen such a case.
Thanks,
Marcus
--
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org brinkmd@debian.org
Marcus Brinkmann GNU http://www.gnu.org marcus@gnu.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de
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