Re: Installation of Recommends by default on October 1st
On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 11:30:33PM +0100, Neil Williams wrote:
> Recommends: is easy with small packages, it becomes more difficult when
> each user does different things with the one package.
This is nothing more than an interface problem. For instance, I think
aptitude should make it more obvious in its preview that a particular
package is being pulled in as a recommends rather than a depends.
Currently they're all thrown in the same bunch as "These are installed
because something else wants them", which is not very helpful.
[...]
> Policy does not mandate that ALL Recommends: are to be installed. The
> new default makes Recommends: disappear completely - there would be no
> difference between Depends: and Recommends: just like there is a
> perception of no real difference between Recommends: and Suggests: at
> the moment. That makes things HARDER for people like me who do not want
> Recommends: because maintainers will lose any reason to put things in
> Recommends: and will end up putting everything in Depends: just as many
> current Recommends: are actually just Suggests:
>
> The blanket default that does not take the real meaning of Policy.
The real meaning of policy is what's being implemented currently.
The fact that apt hasn't done this for years is a bug, and this has lead
to many many many more bugs in other packages who considered Recommends
to be a strong Suggests rather than a weak Depends, since that's how apt
implemented it. These packages should be fixed; bugs should be filed on
them. It would also be nice if it were possible to get aptitude to be
more verbose, as I said above, I guess.
Other than that, at least apt will not pull a dselect on you. I really
don't see your problem.
--
<Lo-lan-do> Home is where you have to wash the dishes.
-- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22
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