Re: package splits
As a user, I would recommend that developers use 'recommends' very
sparingly.
The problem with 'recommends' is that if you use dselect and don't install
one of the recommended package, you get reminded each time you run
dselect and have to use 'q' to escape the dependency resolution
screen.
I'd like to see the treatment of 'recommends' be changed so that when
selecting a package brings up the dependency resolution screen, a package
in the 'recommends' category would be marked install (and 'suggest' would
be mentioned, but not selected for install), but if the user unmarked it,
dselect would accept this and not ask (or require using 'q') each time
dselect was run.
I just upgraded a system to frozen today with 'apt-get dist upgrade' (and
found a bunch of mirrors where the Packages files disagreed with the
available packages, btw--otherwise it was fairly clean) and the
installation process did point out that one should be aware of the xbase
splits. This should also be pointed out in the slink upgrade
documentation.
Bob
On Mon, 21 Dec 1998, Martin Schulze wrote:
> James R. Van Zandt wrote:
> > Here are the 17 packages, where the ones with stars are not mentioned
> > in the above "suggests" line:
> >
> > * mail/xmh
> > * x11/rstart
> > * x11/rstartd
> > x11/twm
> > x11/xbase
> > * x11/xbase-clients
> > * x11/xdm
> > * x11/xext
> > x11/xf86setup
> > * x11/xfs
> > * x11/xlib6g
> > * x11/xlib6g-dev
> > x11/xmodmap
> > * x11/xproxy
> > x11/xserver-common
> > * x11/xsm
> > x11/xterm
> >
> > Is this good enough, or should some be added to "suggests", or
> > upgraded to "recommends"? (I don't remember exactly what these imply
> > at upgrade time, and I can't find documentation on it beyond the
> > little in the FAQ.)
>
> Generally speaking it looks good. There are only very few people who
> are using twm, even I prever ctwm or vtwm, so it's not needed. But
> many people have reported that they lost their xterm - so did I, btw.
> It should be mentioned as recommend.
>
> > Is there general agreement that I should file "critical" bugs on
> > packages that do not at least "recommend" the new packages, as
> > suggested by Santiago Vila?
>
> I don't think this justifies a critical bug report. Please only
> file normal ones. If you feel that the bug is important please
> get in touch with the proper maintainers so they can decide if
> they direct the next upload to frozen or not.
>
> Regards,
>
> Joey
>
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----
Bob Nielsen Internet: nielsen@primenet.com
Tucson, AZ AMPRnet: w6swe@w6swe.ampr.org
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