[Sun, 6 Mar 2016 12:12:20 -0500] Kynn Jones <kynnjo@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you for all your comments and suggestions.
>
> My interest in this question stems from the fact that I'm getting
> ready to do a full reinstallation of my system, and I don't want to
> repeat my previous mistakes.
>
> My concern is that the unwanted packages could have landed in my hard
> drive when the system was first installed, even though I kept my
> choices at the time very minimalistic. (E.g. whatever the Debian
> installer uses for installing packages has the equivalent of
> `APT::Install-Suggests "1"` or `APT::Install-Recommends "1"`.)
One of the most minimal installations can be archieved using
`debootstrap`. I am sure, one can also configure to disable Recommends
when using `debootstrap` (I do not know how, sorry).
Even if that is not possible, a `debootstrap`-created installation is
very minimal (likely not to contain /any/ fonts :) ).
[...]
> The config for recommends looks like one of the holes I need to plug.
[...]
Many people performing more or less minimal installations do this. I
believe it is not generally a good idea, as ``Recommends'' ... to quote
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html
This declares a strong, but not absolute, dependency.
The Recommends field should list packages that would be found
together with this one in all but unusual installations.
Think of a network-analyisis tool which does not require network access
to be started. Installing it should probably not depend on components
required to perform live analysis as we can imagine use cases where
only offline opening of captures is necessary. Still, I would expect
the tool to be able to perform live analysis when I install it, thus the
network functionality should be a ``Recommends''. At least, this is
how far I understand Debian dependencies.
> The packages that `aptitude why` shows as being installed due to
> chains containing suggests remain a mystery. It could be a quirk (or
> bug) in `aptitude why` (e.g. for those packages there may be *other*
> reasons for their being installed that are based solely on
> recommends).
[...]
As I already wrote, I have also seen this behaviour. `aptitude why`
sometimes reports Suggests while stronger dependencies (like
Recommends) are the real reason.
HTH
Linux-Fan
--
http://masysma.lima-city.de/
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