Re: Dependencies et al

[John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com>]

Reco writes:
> The parent thread shows that at least some of the users are
> confused by metapackages.

I think that most users are totally ignorant of the nature or even the
existence of metapackages.  As far as they are concerned the Lxqt
package *is* Lxqt and there is no way to get Lxqt other than to install
that package.  I don't see any effective way to explain it to them,
either.

It's not clear to me why metapackages don't make more use of Recommends,
though.  I understand that DE users expect a DE to provide an archiver,
but why does Lxqt *require* one?  Isn't installation of Recommends still
turned on by default?  Perhaps there's a need for "Weak-Depends" such
that Weak-Depends will always be installed but can be removed with no
more than a warning?  This would be used whenever the maintainer cannot
imagine why anyone would want to install package A and not package B,
but A doesn't absolutely require B.  All or almost all of the
dependencies in metapackages would then be weak.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhasler@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA