Hi all,
is there a specific reason why metapackages depend rather then recommend
packages they are meant to pull in?
The rationale behind this question is [0] that we see a plethora of users in
#debian who ask questions like:
"Why did apt remove all my system??⸘!!!!one!one!eleven!"
and we have to explain to them that it is because they decided to remove one
of (typically) gnome's dependencies, which caused the metapackage to be
removed as well. The solution is then to either mark all other dependencies as
manually installed, install a smaller metapackage or a combination of those.
As this is a common problem of our users I was thinking why we don't make it
easier for them to slim down their system after they've done a default
installation. Are there any drawbacks to this change in metapackage semantics
that I am not aware of?
[0] The rationale is also more or less the same as the one formulated for
DEP-6
http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep6/
--
Wolodja <babilen@gmail.com>
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