Re: Recommends for metapackages

[Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 04:39:10PM +0000, Sune Vuorela wrote:
> On 2012-07-10, Gergely Nagy <algernon@balabit.hu> wrote:
> > No. Only if installing recommends is turned on, which cannot be
> > guaranteed.
> 
> There is many ways to break your system. turning off installation of
> recommends is one of them.

Quite.

> That said, recommends is not to be used for metapackages. with
> metapackages you want to ensure *what* the user has installed.
 
I don't see that at all.  Metapackages are a convenience for
administrators and installer developers, not a shortcut for package
developers to determine what the user has installed (e.g. they don't
usually specify versionded depedencies).  As already pointed out,
'gnome' does recommend and suggest some packages that are not strictly
required.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.
                                                              - Albert Camus