Re: Recommends: tetex-doc?
On 24.04.04 Marcus Sundman (sundman@iki.fi) wrote:
Hi,
> Why does tetex-base have tetex-doc as "Recommends" instead of
> "Suggests"? Naturally the tetex-doc package is recommended for
> people using tetex directly, but to most people only using other
> packages that in turn use tetex the tetex-doc package is completely
> useless.
>
Frank and me, we're reading the german TeX news group. Some package
maintainer often complain, that they get error reports, questions
etc. from users of their packages only because they don't have read
the docu of these packages. Hence I/we(?) have decided to put
tetex-doc into Recommend, to make sure the users are at least pointed
to another part of teTeX. It should be clarified, that this part is
important and hence Recommand and not Suggest.
> There are lots of packages that depend on (or recommends) tetex-bin
> which depends on tetex-base which recommends tetex-doc. This means
> that all people that use any of these other packages and a package
> manager frontend that installs all recommended packages (e.g.
> aptitude) will get tetex-doc, too.
>
If a package manager forces the user to install a package, which is
not in (Pre-)Depend, it is broken and should be fixed! At least
apt-get and deselect don't do that IIRC.
> but the decision seems to have been made based on the wrong
> assumption that most people installing tetex would actually use it
> directly. The reality is that people install some small utility,
> such as a2ps, and along with it they get the behemoth that is
> tetex, including its docs and whatnot.
>
I know, that tetex-bin is used by programs like a2ps and is listed in
the Build-Depend of some other packages. Hence we didn't make it
Depend on tetex-doc.
H.
--
Telling the truth to people who misunderstand you is generally promoting
a falsehood, isn't it?
-- A. Hope
http://hilmarpreusse.forum-rheinland.de/
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