Bug#646166: § 2.2.1: clarify why "must not require" includes Recommends
David Paleino <dapal@debian.org> writes:
> section § 2.2.1 of the Policy reads as follows:
> [..] the 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),
> I understand the intent of the sentence in parenthesis, i.e. not to
> automatically install non-main packages while installing main ones, but
> "Recommends" are not a "requirement" for installing the package, as per
> definition in § 7.2 ("a strong, but not absolute, dependency"). If it
> was otherwise, it should be listed as Depends, and the whole package
> should be moved to contrib (thus, it's a bug in the package).
> Automatic installation of Recommends is a per-system configuration
> option, and shouldn't be assumed in Policy IMHO.
> I suggest to drop "Recommends" from that sentence or, if we want to make
> sure no non-main packages get pulled in, maybe that "require" should be
> changed to something else ("cause the installation of"? I don't
> particularly like this though).
I don't think there's going to be consensus for allowing main packages to
Recommend non-free packages, so I went ahead and made the minimal wording
change to avoid the contradiction, namely:
diff --git a/policy.sgml b/policy.sgml
index bfb7cf5..755e6f7 100644
--- a/policy.sgml
+++ b/policy.sgml
@@ -488,9 +488,9 @@
In addition, the packages in <em>main</em>
<list compact="compact">
<item>
- must not require a package outside of <em>main</em>
- for compilation or execution (thus, the package must
- not declare a "Depends", "Recommends", or
+ must not require or recommend a package outside
+ of <em>main</em> for compilation or execution (thus, the
+ package must not declare a "Depends", "Recommends", or
"Build-Depends" relationship on a non-<em>main</em>
package),
</item>
There's another bug where another angle of this is currently being
discussed. (#587279)
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: