On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 00:32:57 +0300 Timo Juhani Lindfors <timo.lindfors@iki.fi> wrote: > Christoph Anton Mitterer <calestyo@scientia.net> writes: > > Each package depends on exactly what it needs to work and recommends > > anything which adds e.g. additional features but doesn't cause > > non-graceful breakage if missing. > > I guess that really depends on what non-graceful breakage means. I > personally assume that not installing recommended packages can mean that > for example the default configuration of the package does not work at > all and the user has to write their own configuration to make the > software work. .. as long as there is some indication that the problem is a missing Recommends. devscripts does a lot of (much appreciated) work for this and other packages don't necessarily have to go that far but there should be an obvious statement (in the package description if short, in the README.Debian / man page if longer) that error foo means that you either install the recommended bar or adjust your configuration by doing baz. That would be something close to "graceful breakage". The kind of handling done by devscripts would be nice to see in other packages. Lack of such handling could also be seen as a bug in the package and does not mean that the package must Depend on something which is not directly necessary. Fix the bug, not mangle the packaging to workaround the bug. I haven't allowed Recommends to be installed by default since it became the default - without problems so far. Makes me think that other maintainers aren't risking the default implementation being broken when a Recommends: is missing or else implementing something akin to the devscripts approach. (Emdebian simply doesn't implement Recommends. emgrip (1)) -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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