Re: Bug#6394: dpkg: dselect's treatment of Recommends
> I don't think that's a good idea. The problem is that recommends is
> being used when suggests would be more appropriate. I expect
> appropriate uses of Recommends to be rare.
>
> >From Programmer's 8.2:
> The Recommends field should list packages that would be found
> together with this one in all but unusual installations.
What we have to look out for is the "unusual installations": we have to
make dselect useable for people in those situations and right now it isn't.
For example, I installed suck, which recommends news-transport-system. I
have no quarrel with that; unless you're in an unusual situation, you
will want a news server installed if you use suck. I am in an unusual
situation, because I pipe downloaded news from
alt.binaries.sounds.mods through uudeview instead, and so dselect is a
problem for me.
I had a suggestion that my quake-lib package should suggest rather than
recommend quake becuase of this problem dselect has. I decided to keep the
recommends in there, though I know this will make some users unhappy.
Maybe other maintainers will decide to work around dselect's problem by
using a suggests where a recommends would be more appropriate, and I want
to keep that from happening.
--
"He. He. He." - - Herman Toothrot
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