Re: More fine-grained control in texlive?

["Rogério Brito" <rbrito@gmail.com>]

Dear all,

On 6/29/07, Frank Küster <frank@kuesterei.ch> wrote:
> Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> wrote:
> > On Fre, 29 Jun 2007, Frank Küster wrote:
> >> > But if the default metapackages pull in the documentation or if they
> >> > "Recommends:" the documentation, this problem would be solved, wouldn't
> >> > it?
> >>
> >> Yes, that would be okay from a packaging point of view.  It's probably
> >> not okay from a licensing point of view.
> >
> > I guess we could argue that providing a Recommends is a strong enough
> > relation for doc files?
> >
> > Frank, what do you think?
>
> I'll ask Markus Kohm in private.  He's the maintainer who has argued
> most intensily for not separting his docs from the input files (in
> particular because of his own "reportbug" script).

Let me put my opinion here: the most widely used package management
systems used by Debian and Debian-derived distributions (like Ubuntu)
are now in a state that regard "Recommends:" as a strong dependency.

For instance, with aptitude, one has to consciously uncheck the box
that says that it will treat "Recommends:" as dependencies or has to
put a file in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d so that all tools based on APT act
with the same behavior.

So, if a user (e.g., like me) actually chooses not to install the
documentation, he should know what he is doing and that he would have
to download the documentation.

Besides this argument, there is the fact that users on low-connections
to the Internet are provided an option, especially when there are
upgrades (dist-upgrade or otherwise).

I recently had to use a dial-up connection because my
"not-so-broadband" (indeed, it is much worse than what you should have
in more developed contries) had problems. When I had a problem with my
xserver not working right and had to report that via reportbug, it was
quite inconvenient.

Please, make sure that Markus Kohm takes this into consideration (I
suppose that he alknows how the Debian infra-structure works,
especially regarding the subtleties of the package management).


Thanks, Rogério.