On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 09:26 +0200, Andreas Tille wrote: > On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 04:40:30PM +0100, Wolodja Wentland wrote: > > is there a specific reason why metapackages depend rather then recommend > > packages they are meant to pull in? > The statement that metapackages depend from packages is not true in > general. A counter example are those metapackages which are created > using the Blends framework (blends-dev). It does not use Depends but > rather Recommends and Suggests - basically for the reasons you are > criticising in your mail. I never meant to imply that *all* metapackages use Depends. I just know from my experience with support in #debian that users frequently run into the problems I described earlier and my motivation is merely to make Debian a more pleasant and intuitively predictable distribution for our users. It is my impression that the problems mentioned in my initial mail can be solved by changing metapackages (like those mentioned by Cyril in his reply) to use Recommends instead of Depends. I am, however, not entirely sure if there are any good reasons for not doing this and therefore hoped to spur a discussion of this topic. What is problematic about this change or a general suggestion that metapackages should use Recommends instead of Depends? -- Wolodja <babilen@gmail.com> 4096R/CAF14EFC 081C B7CD FF04 2BA9 94EA 36B2 8B7F 7D30 CAF1 4EFC
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