Re: Bug#543256: Make installing recommends optional

[Bjørn Mork <bjorn@mork.no>]

Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:

> I think the use case is users who are being control freaks about the set of
> packages on their systems.  If the set of packages being pulled in as
> recommends is *wrong* (they don't fit the Policy definition of Recommends),
> bugs should be filed against those packages and be fixed.  If the set of
> packages is *right*, then there's no good reason to give users a big "ignore
> Policy" button at install time.

The number of "yes, we want this" answers shows that the current set is
wrong.

I think the problem is that I as an administrator don't know whether my
installation is "unusual" or not, making it hard to know whether I
should file a bug against an unwanted Recommends or not.  In fact,
recommending is self-fulfilling.  Only the unusual installations will
avoid installing the recommended package...

One example just out of my head: I've found that it is nearly impossible
to avoid avahi-daemon if APT::Install-Recommends is true.  There are
multiple completely unrelated (IMHO) packages recommending it, like
sane-utils and rhythmbox.  But are these bugs?  I guess a system without
avahi-daemon is pretty unusual, given the number of recommends pointing
in that direction.  Should I start filing bugs anyway?  I'm hesitating,
and have chosen to set APT::Install-Recommends False instead.  



Bjørn