Re: no{thing} build profiles
* Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> [181025 08:26]:
> On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 05:04:11PM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > But a Depends or Recommends on gnupg
> > will annoy 99.9% of the users;
>
> Err, no.
>
> That number makes the assumption that all users who have something
> installed that they don't end up using will be "annoyed".
>
> That's just not correct.
> [snip]
> Of those that do worry, a number may be annoyed, yes. But I suspect that
> the number who will be annoyed will be closer to the .1% number you
> quote above than the number who will not.
I certainly agree with you that 99.9% is clearly a wrong number for
this. However I disagree that even 0.1% justifies using a different
definition for Recommends than policy gives.
The definition of Recommends specifically uses the word "unusual". Its
purpose is to provide flexibility to the clueful admin who has a
specific need or use case to avoid installing the recommended package,
even when that use case is unusual or uncommon. It allows the admin to
continue to use official Debian binary packages to get all the benefits
thereof.
The purpose of the various dependencies is specifically _not_ to prevent
clueless users from submitting bug reports that you believe are useless
and a waste of time.
Abusing the dependency system as a bug triaging tool at the expense of a
small number of admins for this package and another small number for
that package, and still more for those other packages with inflated
dependencies is simply _wrong_.
With that logic, we might as well give up Recommends completely and
always use Depends.
Recommends is for when Depends would be right, but there are some useful
edge cases where the admin might not want the dependent package
installed.
...Marvin
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