Re: desktopnova (rename packages or change dependencies?)

[Stefan Haller <haliner@googlemail.com>]

On Monday 07 June 2010 17:28:19 Daniel Leidert wrote:
> I would expect a simple third solution:
> 
> desktopnova depends on the modules with equal version
> the modules don't depend on desktopnova at all
> 
> Why do they depend on desktopnova atm? They don't contain anything that can
> be run by a user and requires desktopnova. Do they? Just imagine a
> library. It won't do anything useful without any application using it. But
> we don't let the library depend on applications using it. Let the modules
> packages suggest desktopnova if you want. But having them installed does
> not raise any technical reason, why desktopnova must be present at the
> system.
> 
> The version requirement can be easily fulfilled via the desktopnova control
> fileds.

Thank you for your reply.

This solution is also possible. The problem is that the users can't choose the 
desktop environment. Let's say a user has a Xfce system and he installs 
desktopnova. APT now has the choice to install either desktopnova-module-gnome 
or desktopnova-module-xfce. But the user has no impact on the process -- APT 
might choose desktopnova-module-gnome which is the wrong one from the user's 
point of view.

The users have to install the modules first and then the main package. In this 
case neither the main package nor the modules must depend on each other. 
Indeed the dependencies aren't very strong (A modules without the package 
using it is very useless, but there is no 'real' dependency.). Without them 
the process of installing the packages would be complicated, but the 
description of the desktopnova package already mentions that at least module 
is needed to use the program, because only the modules contains the features 
the users expect. That's why I would say 'depends' is ok.

I hope I missed nothing, but I don't see a way to express the dependencies in 
the control file easily. Of course, you can convince me of the contrary -- you 
are much more experienced in creating packages. ;)

I think that renaming reduces confusion. Package names ending with -common 
suggest that you normally don't install them directly. The users install 
desktopnova-gnome or desktopnova-xfce (both would be ok, too) and everything 
is alright.


Regards,
Stefan