On Sunday, November 15, Guy Maor wrote > Depends is a required relationship that dpkg will enforce. Recommends > is a fairly strong relationship that is difficult to override with > dselect. Suggests is a weak relationship that is easy to override > with dselect. The problem with recommends it that when a recommends isn't satisfied, dselect will bug you about it on *every session*, and you have to use 'Q' to confirm this 'dangerous' setting. That makes recommends almost useless. There'll always be someone who has a good reason for not installing the recommended package, they'll become really annoyed by dselect constantly bugging them about it and will either a) uninstall the package with the recommends line, b) will a bug report against the package, saying the recommends is too strong and asking it to changed to a suggests or c) give up using dselect in favor of some other tool that doesn't bug you to death about unsatisfied recommends. How about changing the behavior of recommends to be just like that of suggests, except that the recommended package is selected by default, so that you have to unselect it if you don't want it. Most people will just plow ahead and hit return (and so the recommended package will be installed on most machines), but people who don't want the recommended package can unselect it without being from then on condemned to seeing dselect conflict resolution screen every time they select/unselect unrelated packages. Packages who can't function properly in the absence of another package should depend on that package, not recommend it. Otherwise, since everything *is* working, the sysadmin shouldn't be... well, pestered by dselect every time. Getting off soapbox... Christian PS Since dselect will eventually be replaced by apt, another relevant question would be "how will apt deal with recommends?"
Attachment:
pgpPFO_qMSi_p.pgp
Description: PGP signature