Joe Smith wrote:
Counter proposal: New meta-package Boolean field.Meta-packages would normally have few or no Depends, being almost completely recommends.Recommends (perhaps also Depends) of meta-packages are not marked as automatically installed.
The usefulness of this part of my counter proposal is debatable. It allows removing the meta-package without removing the installed packages. If that is not desired, then don't include it. That would make meta-packages special only due to the following:
Attempting to install a meta-package if apt is not configured to install recommends by default will terminate in an error, rather than completing, unless a force flag was passed. (This is to ensure the meta-package does not basically completely fail if that setting is off, without spitting out some form of error).