[CTTE #681783] "Recommends", particularly in metapackages
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The question of the use of Recommends, particularly in the context of
metapackages, was referred to the Technical Committee.
The TC has made the following decision:
Whereas:
1. The Technical Committee's view is that the existing policy
on Recommends is correct.
2. Specifically, we feel that there is nothing inherently wrong with
using Recommends in a metapackage. Any infelicities in package
management software's handling of Recommends (in metapackages or
more generally) should be treated as bugs.
3. It may be that policy could be clarified in this area, for
example to make it clear that if a user chooses not to install
Recommends, some things may not work, and that that would not be
a bug.
Therefore:
4. We do not make a ruling about the content of policy.
5. We advise the policy maintainers to consider how to clarify
this, and to make whatever changes they consider appropriate.
Please see http://bugs.debian.org/681783 for background and
discussion. The advice from point 5 has been passed on to the policy
maintainers, in the form of http://bugs.debian.org/685746.
This general question about Recommends arose in the context of the
dependency from the gnome-core metapackage to network-manager-gnome.
The TC is still considering that more specific issue; see
http://bugs.debian.org/681834.
Ian.
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