Re: Relation between Suggests and Enhances

[James Westby <jw+debian@jameswestby.net>]

Ben Finney wrote:
> Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> writes:
> 
>> On Tue, 2009-08-18 at 22:36 +0300, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote:
>>> As I understand it, "A enhances B" has (more or less) the same
>>> effect as "B suggests A". Thus, the reverse Suggests relation would
>>> be redundant.
>> A plugin "enhances" the application it works in, but the application
>> should not normally suggest all its plugins
> 
> Yet a package of a plugin should surely have a ‘Depends’ relationship to
> the application package. Adding an ‘Enhances’ relationship seems
> redundant in that case.

No, there are plenty of packages which depend on another without
enhancing the latter in a way that is interesting to users. How
many packages enhance libc6?


Consider a package that can optionally GPG encrypt it's output. It might
suggest gnupg as an indication that you could install it to get a better
experience. Does gnupg enhance this package? Does gnupg care? Is it
going to add an "Enhances" for it?

Now consider the large number of iceweasel extensions that we could have
in the archive? Would you like to join the mozilla packaging team and
add a "Suggests" entry for each one that gets uploaded?

I see it as an almost bi-directional relationship, but one that allows
you to add it to the package that "cares" about it more.

Thanks,

James