Re: Reasons for recommends and suggests

[Brian May <bam@snoopy.debian.net>]

>>>>> "Neil" == Neil Williams <linux@codehelp.co.uk> writes:

    Neil> The only bug suitable for this scenario is a wishlist bug
    Neil> for a more verbose manpage.

I want to know if I should install the package recommendations or not
when I install the package.

Unfortunately you cannot see the man pages until after the package is
installed. Also aptitude will by default install all recommendations.

Sometimes recommendations include packages that appear to be
excessive. Do I really need to install the kernel source to get this
package working? Maybe not (sorry can't remember the package that did
this now). Other times the recommendations will conflict with other
things I have installed.

I want to know at the time of installing a new kernel, in aptitude,
for example, if and why I should allow aptitude to continue its
favoured approach to install the recommended libc6-i686 and remove the
conflicting libc6-xen package.

Anybody who knows xen would also know that I should keep libc6-xen,
but there are lots of cases when I am just trying out a new package
for the first time and I don't yet know what features I will need or
not need.

This in turn can result in errors when experimenting with new packages
where it is not immediately obvious it is due to a package that is not
installed that perhaps should be.
-- 
Brian May <bam@snoopy.debian.net>