Bug#539798: texlive: please suggest -doc packages
On Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:25:13 +0200 Frank =?iso-8859-1?Q?K=FCster?= <frank@debian.org> wrote:
> tags 539798 wontfix
> thanks
>
> Martin Godisch <martin@godisch.de> wrote:
>
> > Please make the dependency of texlive-* on their according texlive-*-doc
> > packages "suggests" instead of "recommends".
>
> No, as already discussed multiple times on the Debian TeX list. I don't
> recall the bug numbers, probably scattered over half a dozen binary
> packages.
>
> Reasons:
>
> - Licensing often requires to ship docs and runtime files together,
> Recommends is already a compromise which we adopted after installing
> Recommends became standard
Fedora adopted a similar package organization and they do not force such a strict
dependency AFAIK. We should also consider the (in)convenience imposed by such
decision on the end-user. A bit of pragmatism would be appreciated here.
> - We actually do want our users to have the docs installed on usual
> installations, so we really want Recommends. Otherwise, people will
> use randomly found documentation found via $search_engine, and then
> come complaining that the package doesn't work "as advertized".
We are close to 2017 and mostly everyone rely on internet resources for finding
answers. You can fight it all you want, but shipping -doc packages by default won't
change that.
It is just plain annoying that anything depending on LateX has to pull MBs of unused
-doc packages due to outdated stances on packaging.
Ghis
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