Re: Number of Debian packages available.
On Tue, 2012-10-16 at 18:56 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Ma, 16 oct 12, 17:34:19, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> > FWIW tons of packages doesn't mean tons of apps etc., since of the
> > strange policy to split some packages in an insane way, e.g. the jackd
> > packages are split really insane. Or does any package depend to libjack
> > without jackd? And if so, why?
>
> Why should every application *capable* of outputting to jackd force one
> to install jackd?
Jackd could be a "suggested dependency", if you don't use jackd, why
should the app link against the lib? The app should link against it, as
soon as you configure the app to use jackd and than you need jackd
completely, not only the lib.
> > There often is the argument that shared libs will keep a system small,
> > but bad hard dependencies often enlarge a system. On Arch there e.g. is
> > a dependency to systemd. I use intitscripts, not systemd, but have got
> > systemd installed. On Debian for example there's a hard dependency to
> > pulseaudio for some apps, even if it's completely useless.
>
> Care to provide some examples? Looking through the reverse dependencies
> of the package 'pulseaudio' the only strange one is
> kde-telepathy-call-ui. If you meant dependency to libpulse, then the
> answer is the same as for jackd.
Ok, I only know one GNOME package, but to use GNOME you need this
package.
> > And FWIW, meta-packages only summarize some other packages, so the count
> > of packages gives information about big nothing.
>
> We don't know anything about Lisi's use case, so this is maybe a bit
> premature?
Yesno. I also like to hear about the count of packages, but this
information is nearly useless.
Regards,
Ralf
Reply to: