Re: Bug#543256: Make installing recommends optional
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 12:28:00AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 09:15:59AM +0200, Bj?rn Mork wrote:
> > > 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.
>
> No, it doesn't; all it shows is that there are people who are willing to
> complain about installation of Recommends by default.
They're complaining for no reason whatsoever?
> > I'm hesitating, and have chosen to set APT::Install-Recommends False
> > instead.
>
> I think that's self-evidently the wrong solution. If you don't want
> avahi-daemon installed, you can uninstall that one package or use equivs or
> do a variety of other things. It doesn't make sense to ignore all package
> Recommends just because there's one particular package you don't want on
> your system.
For me, it's not one package, it's a lot of packages. Taking one example,
openssh-server, if I install recommends I get about six packages I really,
*really* don't want on all my servers. (That's one of the less annoying
examples; other things I've installed pull in services as recommends, I
believe avahi-daemon has crept in at one time or another).
I'm not about to start listing dozens (probably hundreds, taken across all
my machines) of packages in my manifests as "don't install this... and
this... and this...". I do, however, recognise that I probably qualify as
producing "unusual installations", so filing tons of bugs saying that
practically every Recommends: entry in the archive is inappropriate just
doesn't seem reasonable.
I see "install no recommends" as an "I'm an unusual installation" button;
putting that into the d-i UI is probably not really important (if you're
unusual installation, you should know enough about preseeding to be able to
handle that). It definitely needs to exist, though; if we make it
impossible to avoid installing recommends, why bother with the distinction
at all and just stick everything in Depends?
- Matt
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