Re: Gratituous dependences among packages
On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 08:33:55PM +0200, Omer Zak wrote:
> At the encouragement of Luk Claes, I would like to raise this subject in
> the general mailing list.
>
> It has been my impression that when using aptitude and requesting to
> install/upgrade desktops (KDE, maybe also Gnome), several other
> packages, which don't interest me, are installed as well. They cause a
> bloat to the installation and longer upgrade times in the future.
>
> I agree with Luk that it is reasonable to recommend the installation of
> games, texlive-* and other goodies with packages like KDE and Gnome. My
> problem is that the desktop packages REQUIRE the cruft.
>
> Example:
> kde depends on kdegraphics (will be broken without this dependence)
> kdegraphics depends upon kdvi (will be broken without this dependence)
> kdvi depends upon some texlive-* packages
>
> So satisfying those dependences would pull in lots of texlive stuff,
> even if one has no need for TeX related files.
>
> My wish is that modularization of Debian packages be improved. It means
> that it'll be possible to uninstall all games in a PC and continue to
> have functioning KDE. Likewise - TeX.
kde is a metapackage that includes _all_ KDE that is not related to
development. If you just want a functional KDE without games and related
stuff look at kde-core. Then you can install what you want else using the modules
metapackages (kdemultimedia, kdenetwork, kdeadmin....) or just the application
you are missing.
Ana
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