Packages: required vs recommended vs suggested

[Neal Lippman <nl@lippman.org>]

I was wondering if someone could clarify how apt-get handles the various
categories of related packages.

I did in install last pm of a package which "recommends" other packages,
which it turned out I needed in order to make things work. However,
apt-get install <package> did not automagically install the recommended
packages (it did get required dependencies) and I spent quite a while
before I figured that out.

How do you cause apt-get to at least ask you about installing
recommended, or suggested, package dependencies?

nl