Re: Suggestion for next Debian release
* dman (dsh8290@rit.edu) spake thusly:
> On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 12:56:19PM -0600, Dimitri Maziuk wrote:
> | Ok, now bitchx depends on xutils, who in turn suggests xfree86-common,
> ^^^^^^^^
> | who in turn depends on libaxw and so on (THIS BOX HAS NO FSCKING X!!!).
>
> It is a sugggestion, not a requirement.
Must be a brain fart: I'm sure it was "Suggests: xfree86-common" when I
looked at "packages that depend on xutils" in aptitude. Now that I checked,
xutils actually *depends* on xfree86-common.
Besides, that wasn't my point. I was referring to all those useless
libraries that get installed "because somebody might want to
* run $foo in xterm
* authenticate HTTP requests against mysql database
* etc."
I'm sure it sounded like a reasonble idea at the time, but when
$foo depends on $bar who depends on $baz and so on ad nauseam, the
whole thing will get FUBAR eventually. All it takes is a little bug
somewhere in the middle of dependency tree, and you'll see apt
downloading 10GB of packages you didn't want while purging the ones
you did want "to satisfy dependencies".
Dima
--
I'm going to exit now since you don't want me to replace the printcap. If you
change your mind later, run -- magicfilter config script
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