On February 2, 2005 04:04, Michail Bachmann wrote: > > If you're on a LAN, why are you using kppp? It would be helpful if > > you could explain your situation in more detail. > > Because unfortunately there is a dependency relation which leads to > kppp: kde->kdenetwork->kppp. OK. > Maybe it would be better if kdenetwork would only recommend kppp and > not depend on it, but I can see a rationale in that decision, > kdenetwork being a metapackage and used by different kind of users. > > However I can not see the rationale in raising the dependency on ppp > from Recommends to Depends. If you are a new user, you would use some > frontend like aptitude to install kppp, so the Recommends dependency is > strong enough and ppp will be installed. On the other hand a more > advanced user still can ignore the recommendation if he knows he did > not need it on his system. > > Changing the dependency does not improve the comfort using this package > to a new user but will inconvenience a more advanced user. Believe me, we get a ton of reports from new users whose packages don't work because they didn't install the Recommends. But that's not why I made kppp depend on ppp - I did it because it does depend on ppp. By the rationale you are putting forward, packages depended on by a metapackage should never have any dependencies at all, since of the ~100 packages installed by the kde metapackage, you may only use 20, yet would then be obliged to install un-needed dependencies for the other 80. In short, package dependencies should not be affected the presence of a metapackage. I understand your concern, but the real problem is that metapackages are a crude solution to a general problem. If you don't need one of the packages installed by a metapackage, you could simply uninstall the metapackage. Perhaps, though, a nicer solution would be for the metapackages to only Recommend their packages - that way people could customize their KDE installs without losing the metapackages, which many seem not to want to do. Comments anyone? Chris
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