Re: Metapackage dependencies: "Depends" or "Recommends"?
On 28/07/15 13:08, Marvin Renich wrote:
> There is no downside to using Recommends and no upside to using Depends
> for metapackages.
I don't think it's that simple; it comes down to a question of what the
metapackage "means", which is a design question for its maintainer.
For metapackages that are about getting a broad range of options, I
think Recommends make sense, for the reasons you gave. I agree that
games-finest is in this category: installing games-finest should pull in
"a selection of outstanding Debian games", but if you don't like
openarena and you remove it, you still have what it says in the
package's Description.
For metapackages that exist to make upgrades work ("dummy packages"),
usually only Depends make sense: the package's entire purpose is to make
sure old dependencies pull in what's needed.
Tasks and task-like metapackages can be a mixture of both. It would make
no sense for xfce4 to drop its Depends on xfwm4 down to a Recommends: if
you don't have xfwm4, it is simply not true that you have "the core
packages of the Xfce4 desktop environment" and the package database
shouldn't claim that you do. Conversely, bumping xfce4's Recommends on
tango-icon-theme up to a Depends would seem excessive: installing xfce4
should normally give you its recommended icon theme, but if you choose
not to install that, the result is still xfce4. Similarly, d-i tasks are
careful to distinguish between Depends and Recommends.
Perhaps the right question to be asking is: if foo has a RC bug, does
that inherently make the task-bar metapackage unreleasable? If yes, then
task-bar Depends on foo; if no, then task-bar Recommends (or even
Suggests) foo.
Applying that logic to the xfce4 metapackage: if xfwm4 had a RC bug and
got kicked out of testing, then the XFCE suite would not be not usable,
so we should also consider xfce4 to be RC-buggy. Good; it should have a
Depends, which it does. If tango-icon-theme had a RC bug and got kicked
out of testing, then the XFCE suite would only be superficially
different under some other icon theme (perhaps hicolor or gnome), so
xfce4 should not be considered to be RC-buggy. Also good: it should have
a Recommends or weaker, and indeed it does.
Applying the same idea to the games metapackages, if openarena becomes
RC-buggy and gets kicked out of testing, then games-finest and games-fps
have lost one of their games; but they still have others, so they still
serve their purpose, and aren't RC-buggy.
S
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