Bug#252082: closed by Pierre HABOUZIT <madcoder@debian.org> (Re: kmail: program "lockfile" doesn't exist when requesting FCNTL mail locking)

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net>]

On Sat, May 20, 2006 at 09:54:33PM +0200, Pierre Habouzit wrote:
> Le Sam 20 Mai 2006 20:55, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton a écrit :
> > "recommends" don't get installed by default.
> >
> > you therefore have a policy violation bug.
> >
> > at the very least you need to notify people of the requirement.
> >
> > l.
> 
> not at all. the "recommended" tool to install packages is aptitude, that 
> installs recommends by default. It is assumed that people that do not 
> use aptitude (or a tool that installs recomends - dselect does IIRC) 
> know what they are doing and are aware enough to look at the 
> recommends.
 
 i've been through this with you (debian people) already.

 how am i, a long-term user of apt-get, along with tens of thousands
 of other long-term users of apt-get, supposed to magically imbue debian
 policy into our heads?

 if you don't use anything other than apt-get, and have not used
 anything other than apt-get, there's nothing in "apt-get" that say
 "don't use apt-get", how the hell is anyone supposed to know???

> this is completely in the debian's philosophy. Recommends are packages 
> that gives a big gain to the package that recommends them, but that are 
> not *necessary* for it to work. procmail for kmail is exactly in that 
> case.

 sounds like a complete cop-out to me.

 please do look at what happened with xserver-common and with
 xbase-clients.

 i got a system installed some time ago where xfs was installed,
 but i didn't know - and there was no way _to_ know - that you have to
 install x-window-system, x-window-system-core etc.

 as a result, there were no fonts.

 i wasted _three_ days on this - and exactly the same stupid stupid "oh
 if you're not using aptitude xxxx off" reasons were given.

 eventually, presumably after several similar complaints from people
 other than myself, someone saw sense to take up my advice, which was to
 put a verbose "warning" in saying "error, guys, i have no fonts.  you
 either need to install xfs and configure it or you need to install the
 font packages, and you probably simply forgot to install
 x-window-system.  go fix this."

 you would do well to stop hiding behind some stupid policy (which
 no sane debian USER and i said USER not "policy writer" is going to
 read) and sort this out.

 l.