Bug#434651: debian-policy: New virtual package: wims-extra
José "L. Redrejo" <jredrejo@debian.org> writes:
> However most of the "meat" is provided by the packages wims-extra-xx,
> which contain hundreds of educational modules (this number hopefully
> will grow quickly). In July 2007, the installed size of wims-extra-all
> is roughly 200 MBytes. Some webmasters might want to install less rich
> sets of modules, for example only the modules localised in their
> language, or a set of modules targeted to a particular domain of study.
> There is already a package wims-extra-es with Spanish-only modules, and
> some other packages might be made available in the near future, like a
> French-only collection, or a collection dedicated to physics and
> chemistry, etc.
> The current wims maintainer (who is in the cc'ed list for this mail)
> asked me to sponsor this package, and, after some conversations with
> him, we both agree that wims package should have a recommends to a
> virtual package called "wims-extra", so people may provide packages for
> the "meat" with their particular flavor, while the package
> wims-extra-all providing wims-extra would be part of the official
> distribution.
I don't think I understand from this what the specification of a package
that would Provide wims-extra would be.
A virtual package exists to satisfy a dependency on a specific piece of
functionality. For example, ispell needs a dictionary, packages need to
depend on a mail transport agent, and Emacs add-ons are only useful if
some version of Emacs is installed.
What dependency is wims-extra providing? It seems like there is a general
server (wims) and a variety of different modules for it, but I'm not
seeing where anything needs to depend on the wims-extra virtual package.
Wouldn't people just install the wims server and then whatever modules
they want to use, sort of like installing an Apache server and whatever
Apache modules they wish to use?
The description, in particular, sounds like a grab bag of different
functionality:
> wims-extra - extra exercises, translations and modules that enhance wims
> functionalities.
so I don't know what would be guaranteed about a package that Provides
wims-extra. It seems like all that would tell me is that it works with
wims, which isn't something one has to use a virtual package to do.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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