Re: Recommends for metapackages

[Abou Al Montacir <abou.almontacir@sfr.fr>]

On Tue, 2012-07-10 at 18:10 +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> On 12-07-10 at 06:14pm, Eugene V. Lyubimkin wrote:
> > On 2012-07-10 16:18, Gergely Nagy wrote:
> > > But the purpose of the meta-package is to pull stuff in. Depends 
> > > does that, Recommends does not, therefore Recommends is not 
> > > appropriate for the task.
> > 
> > Surely Recommends does pull stuff in. It's clearly reflected in Debian 
> > policy and supported by most if not all high-level packages managers 
> > in Debian.  Therefore it's totally appropriate for the task.
>
> Recommends does not _ensure_ that all is pulled in.
>
> The very purpose of a meta-package is to _ensure_ that a certain set of 
> packages is installed, not just recommend them: All (not only most) 
> users of that package need all its dependencies satisfied - those that 
> don't should simply uninstall the meta-package.
Exactly! And as confirmation see below you will see gnome recommending and even suggesting, which is probably fine:

aptitude show gnome
Package: gnome                           
State: installed
Automatically installed: yes
Version: 1:3.0+9
Priority: optional
Section: gnome
Maintainer: Debian GNOME Maintainers <pkg-gnome-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Uncompressed Size: 52.2 k
Depends: gnome-core (= 1:3.0+9), desktop-base, alacarte (>= 0.13.2), cheese (>= 3.0), ekiga (>= 3.2), evolution (>= 3.0), evolution-plugins (>= 3.0),
         file-roller (>= 3.0), gedit (>= 3.0), gnome-documents, gnome-games (>= 1:3.0), gnome-orca (>= 3.2), gnome-nettool (>= 3.0), hamster-applet (>=
         2.91.2), seahorse (>= 3.0), tomboy (>= 1.6) | gnote, vinagre (>= 3.0), abiword (>= 2.8) | libreoffice-gnome, avahi-daemon, gimp (>= 2.6),
         gnome-media (>= 2.91), gnumeric (>= 1.10) | libreoffice-gnome, inkscape (>= 0.48), rhythmbox (>= 2.90), shotwell, simple-scan, sound-juicer (>=
         2.32.1+20110330), transmission-gtk, xdg-user-dirs-gtk, libatk-adaptor, cups-pk-helper (>= 0.1.2), epiphany-extensions (>= 3.0), gedit-plugins (>=
         3.0), gnome-applets (>= 2.91), gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg (>= 0.10.12), gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly (>= 0.10.18), gvfs-bin, nautilus-sendto (>= 3.0),
         rhythmbox-plugins, rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder, telepathy-gabble, telepathy-salut, totem-plugins, libgtk2-perl (>= 1:1.130)
Recommends: browser-plugin-gnash, gdebi, gnome-games-extra-data (>= 3.0), liferea | evolution-rss | blam, menu-xdg, nautilus-sendto-empathy, telepathy-idle
Suggests: dia-gnome, gnucash, libreoffice-gnome, libreoffice-evolution, planner, gnome-tweak-tool

saida:~# aptitude show gnome-core
Package: gnome-core                      
State: installed
Automatically installed: yes
Version: 1:3.0+9
Priority: optional
Section: gnome
Maintainer: Debian GNOME Maintainers <pkg-gnome-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Uncompressed Size: 52.2 k
Depends: brasero (>= 3.0), dconf-gsettings-backend (>= 0.7.5), dconf-tools (>= 0.7.5), empathy (>= 3.0), eog (>= 3.0), epiphany-browser (>= 3.0), evince (>=
         3.0), evolution-data-server (>= 3.0), fonts-cantarell, sound-theme-freedesktop, gcalctool (>= 6.0), gconf2 (>= 2.32), gdm3 (>= 3.0), glib-networking
         (>= 2.28.7), gnome-backgrounds (>= 3.0), gnome-bluetooth (>= 3.0), gnome-contacts, gnome-control-center (>= 1:3.0), gnome-disk-utility (>= 3.0),
         gnome-icon-theme (>= 3.0), gnome-icon-theme-extras (>= 3.0), gnome-icon-theme-symbolic (>= 3.0), gnome-keyring (>= 3.0), libpam-gnome-keyring (>=
         3.0), gnome-menus (>= 3.0), gnome-packagekit (>= 3.0), gnome-panel (>= 3.0), gnome-power-manager (>= 3.0), gnome-screensaver (>= 3.0), gnome-session
         (>= 3.0), gnome-session-fallback (>= 3.0), gnome-settings-daemon (>= 3.0), gnome-shell (>= 3.0), gnome-system-monitor (>= 3.0), gnome-terminal (>=
         3.0), gnome-themes-standard (>= 3.0), gnome-user-guide (>= 3.0), gnome-user-share (>= 3.0), baobab (>= 3.0), gnome-dictionary (>= 3.0),
         gnome-screenshot (>= 3.0), gnome-search-tool | tracker-gui, gnome-system-log (>= 3.0), gnome-font-viewer (>= 3.0), gsettings-desktop-schemas (>=
         3.0), gstreamer0.10-plugins-base (>= 0.10.34), gstreamer0.10-plugins-good (>= 0.10.29), gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio (>= 0.10.29), libgail-3-common (>=
         3.0) | libgtk-3-common (>= 3.2), gucharmap (>= 1:3.0), gvfs-backends (>= 1.8), libcanberra-pulse, metacity (>= 1:2.34), nautilus (>= 3.0),
         network-manager-gnome (>= 0.9), notification-daemon (>= 0.7), policykit-1-gnome, pulseaudio, totem (>= 3.0), vino (>= 3.0), yelp (>= 3.0), zenity
         (>= 3.0)
Suggests: gnome
Description: The GNOME Desktop Environment -- essential components


The most logical is that gnome-core does not depend on network-manager-gnome but the gnome package do. Indeed, experienced users will install gnome-core and select the rest manually.

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part