Re: Opt out style recommends

[Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@err.no>]

]] Russ Allbery 

> I think a more correct fix would (unfortunately) involve a new binary
> package field that we don't currently have: Depends-Shallow (for lack of a
> better term) that acts like Depends *except* disables Recommends
> processing for anything below the shallow dependencies in the tree.  So if
> everything you're installing only Depends-Shallow on libimobiledevice4,
> you don't get the recommendation; if anything straight depends on it, you
> do.

I think I want something like Recommends that get less and less weight
the further they get from something you explicitly requested. Direct
recommends: 1 point, One step indirect, 0.8 point, two steps 0.8^2
points, etc.  One point or more -> install.  You can then also do things
like adding together scores, so if A, B and C all suggests D, you might
get that, even if none of them would pull it in by themselves.

(Weights are obviously pulled out of thin air, experimentation would be
needed to find sensible values.)

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are