Bug#378112: Depends vs. Recommends (Was: Bug#378112: ITP: gzrt -- gzip recovery toolkit)

[Jens Peter Secher <jps@debian.org>]

Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl> writes:

> On Sun, Jul 16, 2006 at 10:11:41AM +0200, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote:
>> 
>> I agree that that is a common type of file to recover, so that would
>> make it more appropriate to Recommend cpio rather than Suggest.
>
> "a common type"?  Come on, that's not just "common", it's "a vast
> majority of cases".  And, a hard Depend on a small priority=important
> package is not a big burden -- what about just having a dependency
> without the comment?

No.

And the reason can be found in Policy section 7.2:

    Depends

        This declares an absolute dependency. A package will not be
        configured unless all of the packages listed in its Depends
        field have been correctly configured.

        The Depends field should be used if the depended-on package is
        required for the depending package to provide a significant
        amount of functionality.

        The Depends field should also be used if the postinst, prerm or
        postrm scripts require the package to be present in order to
        run. Note, however, that the postrm cannot rely on any
        non-essential packages to be present during the purge phase.

    Recommends

        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.


The dependency system is used to make sure things don't break on the
_system_ level.  To ease upgrades, transitions, etc., dependencies
(Depends) should be kept to the absolute minimum.

Cheers,
-- 
                                                    Jens Peter Secher
_DD6A 05B0 174E BFB2 D4D9 B52E 0EE5 978A FE63 E8A1 jpsecher gmail com_
A. Because it breaks the logical sequence of discussion
Q. Why is top posting bad?