On Lu, 16 iul 12, 15:50:06, Ian Jackson wrote: > Andrei POPESCU writes ("Bug#681783: Are Recommends really important (especially for metapackages)?"): > > Package: tech-ctte > > These questions seems rather abstract to me. I would rather deal with > them iff they turn out to be relevant to an actual specific package or > package(s). Are you referring to the discussion surrounding > gnome-core and network-manager ? > > If you would like the TC to make a ruling on that specific question > then I'm sure we'd be happy to do so. I am on purpose trying to avoid any specific issue, as I believe at this time there are too many in the archive and it would be unproductive for all parties involved. > > Following the big sub-thread "Recommends for metapackages" on > > debian-devel[1] I would like to submit following questions to you as per > > Debian Constitution 6.1, item 5 ("Offer advice"). Examples below are not > > meant to request specific decision(s) from your side or even to point > > fingers at any one package Maintainer (DD or not), but to better explain > > what I think is a more general problem that you could address. > > I don't think it would be a good idea for the TC to formally offer > such abstract advice, at least in this case. The result would seem to > be likely to be arguments over the interpretation of our advice. If by "this case" you mean gnome-core and network-manager, then by all means, delay any ruling until the spirits have settled (this is why I mentioned after the release) :) > But I'm happy to give my personal opinion: > > > 1. Is running a system with Recommends turned off a supported > > configuration? > > I would say that "yes it is supported" but that violating a Recommends > may result in unexpected or less favourable behaviour. > > Ie, I think a maintainer is at liberty to close bug reports resulting > from violated Recommends with "don't do that then", providing that the > failure mode is reasonable. I completely agree. However, maintainers may not want to expose themselves to a flood of bugs triggered by some missing un-essential functionality[1]. It might help them more if for example all Debian documentation was amended first to discourage disabling Recommends. Before starting any work on this I'd rather have a "go" from you. [1] I have argued this myself on debian-user on the occasion of Xorg -> hal controversy. Kind regards, Andrei -- Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/d-community-offtopic
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