Kevin Mark wrote:
> I agree. There are different users, not all are 'programmers', some are
> gui-desktop-users ( and as such should not be ignored and expect only
> 'programmers' to be using your programs) and all they want to know is
> <<how will this 'suggest'ed program enhance my program>>. If you are using
> synaptic or aptitude and just about to select evolution to install it
> and want to connect to exchange then you should not have to first know
> how to install and configure an exchange server, read all its manuals,
> then read all of evolutions documentation and man pages just to know
> that you need to add 'evolution-exchange' to your selection on the
> synaptic or aptitude screen before you install them.
A desktop user is perhaps not the best example, since recommends might
as well be depends to such a user -- they're both things that aptitude
installs when the software is selected. Such a user is also better
served by using the desktop task (which will install evolution-exchange
for them BTW).
Tasksel has the problem that it's still not safe to turn on installation
of all recommends of packages in tasks, because recommends is aparently
overused a lot. Without recommends, tasksel installs a pretty nice
desktop environment; if recommends is turned on, 17% more disk space is
used by the recommended stuff. (#388290) Perhaps a few of those packages
would be useful additions to the regular desktop install, but I have not
yet had the fortitude to go through the list, work out what, and file
bugs on the rest.
Cleaning up the recommends to meet policy seems far more useful than
documenting a bunch of bogus recommends, although the idea of putting
small comments in dependency fields is something I'd much like to see
anyway, especially if it were extended to all fields (including
Build-Dependencies[1]). Comments, after all, can be a very useful thing
from time to time.
--
see shy jo
[1] If you really want to add comments to your build-deps, you can use
the method debian-installer uses to comment its build-deps with some 100
lines of comments. We would not be able to keep the insane build deps
straight without them.
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