On 12-07-10 at 10:07pm, Eugene V. Lyubimkin wrote: > On 2012-07-10 20:15, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > > On 12-07-10 at 07:35pm, Eugene V. Lyubimkin wrote: > > > On 2012-07-10 18:10, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > > > > 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 > > > > > > My definition of meta-package is less strict than yours. I as user > > > sometimes want '[meta]package X, but without packages Y and Z', > > > and your definition absolutely rules that out. > > > > > > I saw many questions on forums like > > > > > > "I did '$packagemanager install $metapackage' and then after > > > '$packagemanager remove $singlepackage', why $packagemanager now > > > wants to remove all $metapackage?" > > > > > > , so I know I'm not alone. > > > > [...] > > You being alone does not make you right. > > > > A package manager wanting to remove all dependencies of a > > meta-package is quite sensible - when you understand the sense of > > it. Until then it is utterly confusing. > > As someone who developed a high-level package manager for Debian from > scratch (including the autoremoval functionality) I'm pretty sure I > understand the sense of it. Fair enough. Sourry if it sounded like I was talking down to you, that wasn't my intention. I simply meant to acknowledge that users can be confused - I sure have been (and problably still is about some things, time will - hopefully - tell). > My message was: users who don't (yet) understand the full picture, > find that behavior confusing, and it takes time to explain. Moreover, > despite me understanding the picture, I still has no clean, safe and > documented way to do what I'd want in case the package maintainer > chosed Depends. Acknowledged. > Next, I don't pretend I'm "right", I do pretend there are >= 1 person > who don't need all dependencies of the metapackage installed, and > hence your 'All [...] users of that package need all its dependencies > satisfied' clause is wrong. You can argue that it's not right for > Debian to support that use case, that's fine. I do support the use case of not needing all packages depended on by some meta-package. My point was (and still is) that those should not use that meta-package: The users of a meta-package is the users of what the meta-package does, which is to pull in a certain set of other packages. It might very well be that some other meta-packages has the different purpose of only _recommending_ a set of packages, but evidently this one does not. No, I do not find it right for Debian to mandate meta-packages to only recommend when some users need only a subset of the offerings of said meta-package: There will _always_ be some users needing only a subset of things, rendering all dependencies "wrong" by that logic! (...as has already been pointed out by others) > > > Using Recommends for non-core parts of metapackages' dependencies > > > would nicely solve that. > > > > ...but I disagree that making meta-packages more elastic is a "nice" > > solution: is a hack covering over misguided users. Possible > > solutions could be improved documentation and improved design of > > package managers. > > ... And I disagree with that. No solution can override policy's "all > Depends must be satisfied". If one choose to support the "exclude from > metapackage" one either has to change the policy, remove packages from > Depends or use non-stock metapackage (which I personally don't like). You need not redefine "depends" to not mean "depends": Simply do not use that meta-package if you do not want _all_ its dependencies installed. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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