Re: Bug#681834: network-manager, gnome, Recommends vs Depends

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Noel David Torres Taño writes ("Re: Bug#681834: network-manager, gnome, Recommends vs Depends"):
> Core to the issue here is that the n-m Depends gets forced even into users 
> that wants the whole platform, that is, the 'gnome' package.

Right:

  http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/gnome
    Recommends: network-manager-gnome (>= 0.8) 
    # no mention of gnome-core

  http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/gnome-core
    # no mention of network-manager*

  http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/gnome
    Depends: gnome-core (= 1:3.0+9)

  http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/gnome-core
    Depends: network-manager-gnome (>= 0.9) [not kfreebsd-amd64, kfreebsd-i386]

So if you currently have `gnome' installed but have deliberately
violated the Recommends to not have n-m, you will `forcibly' gain n-m
during the upgrade.

If we change the Depends to a Recommends then this will not occur.

I have heard that there are at least some versions of some package
managers which will fail to honour the Recommends on upgrade.  Ie that
if you previously had gnome-core, but not gnome, you might end up
without network-manager.  But that's not a particularly undesirable
situation.  It certainly wouldn't cause an existing network-manager to
be removed; the only thing you miss out on is the declared increase in
`coreness', according to GNOME, of n-m.  (And perhaps those package
manager bugs have been fixed by now anyway.)

Ian.