Bug#1753: trn recommends, instead of depends

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>]

Kenny Wickstrom writes ("Re: Bug#1753: trn recommends, instead of depends"):
> On Tue, 24 Oct 1995, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > Bdale Garbee writes ("Bug#1753: trn recommends, instead of depends"):
> > Recommends is correct.  You can read news perfectly happily without
> > either a mail transport or a news article injector.
> >
> > I'll reassign the bug report to tin.
>
> Are you sure this is right?  Normal functionality of tin allows the user
> to mail a response or the article to an address.  Would it be correct for
> the system to allow someone to install a package where some of the
> functionality is missing?  This would surely generate another defect
> report.

No, because it's actually pretty hard to install a package using
dselect and fail to select its Recommended packages too.

You can do it with dpkg, but such bug reports are easy to close (and I
think that most people using dpkg manually will probably have enough
of a clue to think a bit more about what they're doing).

> I suppose recommends is a strong enough relationship that the system
> maintainer would realize that some functionality may be missing if a
> recommended package is missing.

That is part of the definition of the Recommended relationship.

> I will make the change to the tin package.

Thanks,
Ian.