Re: gnome depends on adblock-plus

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> 1: In fact, I think that meta-packages should only have recommendations and
> suggestions, since they are automatically installed by a default Debian
> configuration.

I agree that Debian's dependency management would benefit from some
extra refinements.  The above suggestion is not quite sufficient, since
for those users (like me) which don't want to auto-install
recommendations, it means that "aptitude install gnome" becomes a no-op,
whereas the user's intention is very clearly different.

So, my take on it is that Debian should add a new sort of dependency
(call it "important"), which is stronger than a "recommendation", but
which the user can disable.  But she couldn't disable them all-at-once
like "recommendations", instead she would have to disable them one at
a time.

Further along this route, I'd like APT to let me specify the packages
I want declaratively, with a file in which I list:
- the packages that need to be installed (equivalent to the packages
  that are marked as manually installed rather than auto-installed as
  part of dependencies).
- the dependencies that should be ignored/overruled.
- the "pin <foo> to version <bar>" (where <bar> ideally could also be
  "stable", "testing", ...).
- plus more constraints like "stay away from <foo>" (so that if <foo> is
  needed by some chain of dependencies, then I want APT to give me an
  error rather than to install it, so I can try and work around the
  problem).


        Stefan