On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 10:59:55PM +0700, Ста Деюс wrote:
> Доброго времени суток, KatolaZ.
>
>
> Спасибо за ответ, Wed, 14 Jan 2015 10:52:39 +0000, вы писали:
> > Well, unfortunately there is currently no clear-cut about
> > Recommends. In most of the cases a package will work fine 99.99% of
> > the times even if you don't have the Recommends installed (as in the
> > case of the gdbserver recommended by gdb), in some of the cases a
> > Recommend is simply unnecessary (like exim4 recommended by mutt) but
> > in many other cases Recommends include "standard" package
> > associations, which would make your package loose some
> > important/typical functionalities if not installed (like in the case
> > of ghostscript recommended by gimp)...
>
> Then may the recommendations should be better separeted/termed. -- So
> that in primer case of your example, it should stand as 'recommends'
> while the last one -- 'depends'.
>
>

Yes, but it has never been like that, and never will be. The reason is
that the choice of what is necessary, recommended or just ancillary
for a package to run is ultimately left to the package
maintainer. This is not totally wrong, but allows the introduction of
dependencies which some other user/maintainer might think should not
be there by default.

To be honest, I think there is no final solution to this issue, unless
you opt for a completely centralised (and nazist, in a good way)
package maintenance policy, which leaves the decision on "Depends",
"Recommends" and "Suggests" in the hands of a small group of people,
or ideally of a single benevolent dictator, who has given the divine
power to decide for the masses :) But this is (or at least was) rather
inefficient (the benevolent dictator should have a comprehensive
knowledge on all the dozens of thousands of packages included in a
distribution) and, most importantly, definitely far from what Debian
wanted to be....

My2Cents

KatolaZ

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[ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ --- GLUG Catania -- Freaknet Medialab ]
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