Re: Reasons for recommends and suggests
On Mon, 21 May 2007 13:38:58 +1000, Brian May <bam@snoopy.debian.net> said:
>>>>>> "Hendrik" == Hendrik Sattler <debian@hendrik-sattler.de> writes:
Hendrik> Perhaps. But first, but not all packages are actually strict
Hendrik> about that and I do not want to bloat my installation and
Hendrik> second, if it is really that important (read: essential part of
Hendrik> functionality) is would be a Depends. Does it really happen
Hendrik> that often that this Recommends is needed. Or is it just to be
Hendrik> on the safe side? Anyway, it was just an example out of
Hendrik> many. For non-core packages, Recommends often add functionality
Hendrik> that I'll never use but the package maintainer uses them
Hendrik> daily. Why should I install it then?
> In the past I have seen (broken) packages that recommend "apache"[1].
Did you file a bug?
> Huh? Does this mean the package is incompatible with apache2?
Did you ask in the bug report you filed?
> Just because the maintainer recommends that I should have "apache"
> installed doesn't mean it will loose functionality if "apache" is not
> installed - unless it really is some weird package that depends on
> this obsolete version of apache.
If you don't trust the maintainers recommends, why do you
think you'll trust a one sentence description?
> A description of "to support the HTTP protocol" would imply that the
> version is not important.
Recommends: apache. Reson: needs apache to provide documentation.
I doubt you'll find things very much improved.
> Another user might look at the same package, with the description and
> think "this computer only has a restricted amount of disk space and I
> really don't care if the database does get corrupted - I don't expect
> this system to be around much longer anyway - so I will ignore the
> suggestion and won't install the package."
> With no description it might be more along the lines of "I don't know
> why this package is suggested maybe I will have to install it anyway
> just in case... Lets hope I have enough disk space..."
Recommends: apache. Reson: needs apache to provide added
functionality.
If you are that short of disk space, _do_ run with apt0tude
--without-recommends.
manoj
--
Objects in your terminal are close than they appear.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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