Re: Disabling recommends - was [Re: bash-completion pros/cons]

[Tom Dial <tddial@comcast.net>]

On 6/19/20 09:28, Brian wrote:
> On Thu 18 Jun 2020 at 14:15:00 -0500, David Wright wrote:
> 
>> On Wed 17 Jun 2020 at 20:48:50 (+0100), Brian wrote:
>>>
>>> AFAICT, it appears Recommends are *always* installed using the Installer,
>>> irrespective of preseeding. Not *sometimes*.
>>
>> One or two counterexamples are:
>>
>> openssh-server Recommends xauth ¹
>> popularity-contest Recommends gnupg
>>
>> Neither recommendation was installed until after booting,
>> when I was installing xserver-xorg and mutt respectively.
>>
>> There are one or two more, like pigz and secureboot-db, but these are
>> Recommends of Recommends, which might muddy the issue.
>>
>> But this is during the part of installation run through apt-get,
>> not debootstrap, where the process is more transparent to the user,
>> but likely uninfluenced by debootstrap options.
> 
> I would like to reassess what I wrote; some of it is incorrect and some
> could do with further examination.
> 
>  > My observations indicate that the first claim does not work for
>  > installing the base system or additional software, but the second
>  > configuration is carried out.
> 
> "recommends=false" does not influence the behaviour of debootstrap. It
> does not, as the Manual says, install recommended packages. It was
> incorrect for me to claim otherwise.
> 
> Richard's concern is with tasksel's default installation of recommended
> packages. In this case "recommends=false" does not modify tasksel's
> default behaviour. I think this is because "recommends=false" only acts
> on apt based operations. In other words, tasksel is not apt.

I notice that tasksel (= /usr/bin/tasksel) is a Perl program in which it
appears the "cmd" to be executed once selections are made (line 24 from
the end) is

apt-get -q -y -o APT::Install-Recommends=true -o \
APT::Get::AutomaticRemove=true -o APT::Acquire::Retries=3 install

I suspect that has something to do with the apparent fact that tasksel
ignores "recommends=false" from other sources. I also suspect that
editing that line would change the behavior in the desired direction.
>From long-standing practice and inclination I have no wish to test this,
but someone else might.

I assume this would need to be done by skipping tasksel during
installation of the d-i minimal system, then altering and running the
installed tasksel after the post-install reboot.

Regards,
Tom Dial

>