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Re: Metapackage dependencies: "Depends" or "Recommends"?



On Tue, 28 Jul 2015 16:30:29 +0200
Ole Streicher <olebole@debian.org> wrote:

> There are no things "that the metapackage is for": The package just
> collects a number of programs that belong to the same author and are

The "same author" bit is a bit odd, there needs to be some common
purpose in aggregating a list of packages into a metapackage in the
first place but that's based on function, not authorship.

> usually installed together. There is no particular requirement to have
> any of them installed; therefor I don't want to make any single
> program as "Depend".

I'd still use Depends in the metapackage. e.g. foo-server has lots of
strict dependencies without which is simply won't install or start.
foo-client has less dependencies and a few Recommends because the
client can work for a range of usecases and not everyone needs every
use case.

For those people who *do* want the assurance that every possible use
case can work, then a foo metapackage would Depend on foo-server and
foo-client and *all* of the Recommends of foo-client, possibly
including even a few of the Suggests of foo-client.
 
> Other packages will never depend on this metapackage; they will rather
> depend on the individual programs.
> 
> Or am I abusing the metapackage system here?

Different use cases, I think.

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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