Re: Library depending on -data packages

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> writes:

> For instance, openarena needs a corresponding version of openarena-data:
> if you substitute a data-set in the same format (zipped Quake III-compatible
> assets) with non-trivial modifications, it won't be network-compatible, and
> might even crash if you don't make corresponding modifications to openarena.
> The existence of openarena-data is an implementation detail of openarena,
> so it has this relationship:
>
>        /--->--- Depends -->---\
>     openarena           openarena-data
>        \---<-- Recommends --<--/

Why should openarena-data recommend openarena? How does the
functionality of openarena-data (provide some chunks of data) in any way
change by having openarena installed or not? It doesn't suddenly become
better in providing the data.

I feel that -data and -common packages are obviously enough auxilary
packages which only use is to provide for their main package that we do
not have to overly fear users installing only the -data package and
wndering why the game doesn't work. The recommends seems totaly
unneccessary.

Further, why is the Recommends versioned? Does that even have any affect
at all? Will "apt-get install openarena-data" with recommends enabled
update an older openarena because the recommends lists a newer version.
(Well, it does because of the Breaks. But lets say we only had
Recommends. What then?)


MfG
        Goswin