On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 14:52:39 +1100
Simon Wise <simonzwise@???> wrote:

> On 22/01/16 02:57, Didier Kryn wrote:

> > This "recommends" feature has become a kind of bin for packages the
> > maintainers would like desperately to "require" for obscure
> > reasons, but they fail to find a valid one.
>
> But some more polite packages do use it properly ... for things that
> are not actually dependencies, but that you probably want, and may
> well miss, if you use the package in an average kind of way. It is
> worth a quick look during the apt-get process.

I think it depends on the user. The user who would most likely use
Ubuntu, for instance, has little knowledge of package management and
would probably prefer every possible dependency package for every
possible feature be installed.

But for Devuan, and pre 2014 Debian, I'd imagine the average user
would rather the package manager be more conservative in installing
dependencies.

SteveT

Steve Litt
January 2016 featured book: Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
http://www.troubleshooters.com/28