Re: Depends/Recommends from libraries

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Russ Allbery writes ("Re: Depends/Recommends from libraries"):
>   It still feels like needless complexity to me,

Here is an example I just found.

Try, in a fresh stretch chroot
  apt-get --no-install-recommends install libgtkspell-dev
Which you might reasonably do because you were building something
which linked against libgtk-spell.  Or because you installed some
portmanteau package like ocaml-libs.

-dev libraries are typically installed because you want to build
something, not necessarily because you wanted to _use_ the features of
the runtime library.

The list that comes out is humungous and contains many things that you
probably didn't want.

aspell ?  Well, at least the connection is clear, although it's
clearly wrong to get it.

fontconfig ?  Probably pulled in pointlessly by one of the other
librararies.

dictionaries-common ?  That's a waste of a download.

emacsen-common ?  Wow.

libgtk2.0-dev, which lots of things obviously build-depend on, pulls
in fontconfig and gnome-icon-theme (a 10Mby download).  I can't
believe you need gnome-icon-theme installed to compile gtk2 programs.

Ian.