Re: Mozilla "PostScript/default" security problems
On Fri, Jul 09, 2004 at 11:32:57AM -0400, Greg Folkert <greg@gregfolkert.net> was heard to say:
> Now, what would happen if you used something like aptitude which acts on
> 'recommends' must like 'depends'? Would this help out the Newbie? Yes it
> would as it is a much easier interface for them as well. Has
> meta-packages has automatic selection of recommends, auto-removal of
> un-needed, keeps track of those un-needed. Or for those that demand a
> GUI, synaptic. Synaptic works in much the same way aptitude does for
> Recommends etc.
I agree in general that this is a poster-child case where Recommends
should be used. However, AFAIK no apt frontend [0] handles Recommends
properly in this case. The problem is that Recommends are only checked
when installing a *new* package; if an upgrade adds new Recommends they
won't necessarily be satisfied. For instance, this particular case
WILL bite people upgrading from stable unless they use dselect.
Ideally this would be fixed in apt itself, and I'm filing a wishlist
bug requesting just that. I don't know if the apt team will want to fix
it anytime soon, though (there are a lot of potential corner cases and
I think it could make apt a bit more CPU-intensive).
Daniel
[0] I mean something that links against libapt -- not dselect.
--
/-------------------- Daniel Burrows <dburrows@debian.org> -------------------\
| "Progress just means bad things happen faster." |
| -- Terry Pratchett, _Witches Abroad_ |
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