Bug#214059: debian-policy: Section 2.2.1 unclear on whether Suggesting non-main packages is OK
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.6.1.0
Severity: normal
Recently, a bug report was aimed at the tvtime package -- and we seem to
have uncovered a section in which Debian Policy is not entirely clear.
Bug report #213512 suggested that we should Suggest libdscaler, which is
in contrib, in tvtime, which is in main. However, Section 2.2.1 of the
Debian Policy is unclear on this point. I quote:
[packages in main] must not require a package outside of main for compilation
or execution (thus, the package must not declare a "Depends", "Recommends",
or "Build-Depends" relationship on a non-main package)
The literal interpretation of this that it is permissible, but I think it
could be clarified further. It is currently plausible to interpret the
enumeration of dependency fields in Section 2.2.1 as merely a clarifying
example (i.e. "including, but not limited to"), rather than a complete list.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux tanya 2.4.20 #1 m�mar 31 19:30:02 CEST 2003 i686
Locale: LANG=sv_SE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=sv_SE.UTF-8
-- no debconf information
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