Re: Installation of Recommends by default on October 1st
On Thu, 02 Aug 2007, Joey Schulze wrote:
> Don't we lose it already on October 1st when apt-get installs all
> Recommends per default? It's ok for high-level tools like aptitude
> and Synaptic to behave that way, but I'm not exactly happy for
> apt-get to go that way.
The entire point of Recommends is so that you don't have to have
pacakges that may not be required in unusual situtations installed
without doing equivs machinations or similar tricks to avoid them.
The ability to degrade things that are almost Depends: to a "installed
by default, but can be removed or otherwise configured" state is far
superior to an on-off state.
> At the moment, we who have read Michael's announcement, know how to
> get the old behaviour back (althouth apt-get complained about the
> line he provided), but soon nobody will remember. Then I wonder if
> this feature you praise is lost.
If no one is able to remember, they should look at the documentation.
Frankly, if they aren't capable of reading the documentation, then
they probably aren't able to determine whether they actually do or do
not need the Recommends. [If you're arguing that this is somehow a
slipery slope and the next step is is a Recommends are Depends
tautology, I don't know how to argue with you, besides saying that
many people (which probably includes the current apt mantainers) would
revert such a slide were it to occur.]
Don Armstrong
--
A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.
-- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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