On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 12:19:24AM +0000, Noel Torres wrote:
> On Tuesday, 13 de January de 2015 20:25:25 hellekin escribió:
> > On 01/13/2015 02:23 PM, Joel Roth wrote:
> > > Also, I recall that in a default Debian install, recommended
> > > packages are pulled in by default. A setting change makes it
> > > possible to only pull in the package dependencies.
> >
> > *** Are you suggesting that Devuan should use that setting and not pull
> > in Recommends automatically?

In short, I think there could be situations, a minimum
install or limited bandwidth that a naive user might
appreciate the ability to build up a system more frugally.

> > cat > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70befrugal <<<EOD
> > # Don't pull in Recommends by default
> > APT::Install-Recommends "0";
> > # Don't pull in Suggests by default
> > APT::Install-Suggests "0";
> > EOD
>
> We all, and specially packagers, should remember what is what in Debian's
> dependency system, and what do we want for Devuan.
>
> * Pre-Depends: a package must be installed and correctly configured "before
> even starting the installation of the package which declares the pre-
> dependency"
>
> * Depends: "A Depends field takes effect only when a package is to be
> configured." "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"
>
> * Recommends: "The Recommends field should list packages that would be found
> together with this one in all but unusual installations"
>
> * Suggests (and Enhances): "This is used to declare that one package may be
> more useful with one or more others"
>
> As of this, we should all remember the exact point of Recommends is that the
> dependency is not absolute, but must be honoured almost always. This is why
> the setting is to always install recommends, and leave to the UA (or VUA) to
> decide not to install a specific Recommends package.

During installation, we have a choice of levels of install.
Some people want to install a lightweight system. If they
choose minimum install, probably they would appreciate a
default of installing minimum dependencies.

On the user forums, we will have to answer either, "How can
I install less?" or "How can I install more?" I can see
that the desktop-coocoon-oriented folks would want to
install recommended packages, and recall it was a recent
decision to make that a Debian default.

A more parsimonious default (or choice) would certainly be a
help to naive users with limited bandwidth.

For ongoing administration, I see we have the
--no-install-recommends option to apt-get. I would add
--install-recommends to have in parallel with --install-suggests.

So you could ramp up installing dependencies:

1. apt-get install pkgname
2. apt-get install pkgname --install-recommends
3. apt-get install pkgname --install-suggests

cheers

Joel

> Regards
>
> er Envite



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--
Joel Roth