doom engines and hard dependencies on data files

[Jon Dowland <jon+debian-devel-games@alcopop.org>]

Hi folks,

Someone suggested on an Ubuntu bug against the prboom package that the
engine should list the corresponding data half only in the Recommends:
field.

doom engines are not functionally useful without a corresponding data
half, which is why we do a Depends:.  However, movie players are not
functionally useful without a movie, and yet we do enforce such a
dependency in that case.

Freedoom in main satisfies the dependency, so unless the user reads
prbooms' package description, learns about doom-package (now
game-data-packager) and uses that to install a package of their
commercial game data, it will be pulled in.

I have heard several people complain about this dependency because they
have their own doom data files and didn't want freedoom downloaded and
installed (~7MB). Evidently none of these people bothered to read the
package description (probably because they are already aware of what
prboom is). Until this Ubuntu bug, nobody had actually filed anything. I
do not know how widespread the problem is.

Furthermore, apt now installs Recommends: by default. Back when the
decision to Depends: was made, this was not the case.

If we move the dependency to a Recommends:

	* inexperienced users would still get freedoom pulled in and
	  would still have a working package
	* experienced users could de-select freedoom and use prboom with
	  their own data files, with or without game-data-packager help


What do people think?


-- 
Jon Dowland