On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 10:50:01PM +0200, gregor herrmann wrote: > On Sat, 15 Sep 2018 15:40:33 +0200, Michael Biebl wrote: > > > On Thu, 30 Aug 2018 12:03:31 +0200 Paul Gevers <elbrus@debian.org> wrote: > > > I have just pushed commit 9fade8dcb501250f704da9c77af1f8e6165dc941 that > > > documents that we want to remove the needs-recommends option as we > > > discussed in https://lists.debian.org/debian-ci/2018/06/msg00016.html. > > So I have this specific case where I found needs-recommends quite > > convenient: > > I have a package (firewalld) which has optional dependencies like ipset > > or ebtables. If those are not installed, firewalld will log a warning > > and continue with the functionality disabled. > > We're also using needs-recommends for perl packages / in > pkg-perl-autopkgtest. > > % autodep8 > Test-Command: /usr/share/pkg-perl-autopkgtest/runner build-deps > Depends: @, @builddeps@, pkg-perl-autopkgtest > > Test-Command: /usr/share/pkg-perl-autopkgtest/runner runtime-deps > Depends: @, pkg-perl-autopkgtest > > Test-Command: /usr/share/pkg-perl-autopkgtest/runner runtime-deps-and-recommends > Depends: @, pkg-perl-autopkgtest > Restrictions: needs-recommends > > In practice, there's currently one test in the > "runtime-deps-and-recommends" department: syntax.t which, among other > things, does `perl -wc <perl module file>' and is helpful to detect > syntax errors in code which is not used during build tests. > Cf. also https://perl-team.pages.debian.net/autopkgtest.html#syntax.t > > The reason we need the packages in Recommends is quite simple: there > are often modules in packages which are no core functionality, hence > their dependencies are not in Depends but in Recommends. > > Without needs-recommends we would > - need to exclude them from syntax.t (the machinery exists but it's > quite some work) > - lose the ability to test them. > > So if needs-recommends vanishes, there will be at least dozens if not > hundreds of perl packages which will immediately fail their > autopkgtests. > > (josch's count of 154 affected packages in > https://lists.debian.org/debian-ci/2018/06/msg00016.html > fails to take all the autodep8 packages into account.) Yes. We will need to find a replacement before dropping needs-recommends completely. Maybe we want autopkgtest to also support @recommends@ alongside @builddeps@? This way tests that use @recommends@ would *depend* on the packages in Recommends:, and thus fail if those become uninstallable. This is contrary to the current status quo, where `Restrictions: needs-recommends` doesn't actually ensure that the packages in Recommends are installed.
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