Le 01/02/2016 14:13, Simon Hobson a écrit :
> Florian Zieboll <f.zieboll@???> wrote:
>
>> For the fun of it, I just ran an "apt-get install --install-recommends
>> --no-install-recommends" and it chose to not install the recommends.
>> The same with contradicting lines in apt.conf(.d/*):
>>
>> APT::Install-Recommends "0";
>> APT::Install-Recommends "1";
>>
>> This will install the recommends, the other way around it won't.
>> Apparently there's still some behavior left in modern Linux that is
>> coherent with an autistic mindset, hahaha.
> Makes sense to me too - first entry sets/resets option, next entry resets/sets the same option - the last one taking effect.
>
>> As with any of these newish "*.d/" folders, you can just
>>
>> $ cat apt.conf.d/* > apt.conf && rm -r apt.conf.d/
>>
>> without any consequences regarding the configuration. AFAIU this is all
>> about easier deployment (and automated removal) of configurations - like
>> hitting some button on a shady website to add distribution independent
>> repositories to the sources.list.
> More to the point, it means (in the general case) a number of packages can add/remove their own configs during package install/upgrade/removal just by adding/updating/removing "it's" config file from the conf.d directory. For another example, when installing Xen, it adds a file to Grub's conf.d to add the Xen boot options. Same with various web packages that put a file in /etc/apache2/conf.d.
>
> IMO it's far better than trying to come up with some mechanism to *SAFELY* edit a shared config file.
>
> It also means the user/admin can add their own config file, and if they name it to sort last then they can override any other default settings - but without impacting on the ability of a package to update it's own file. Once you get into editing the package supplied config file then upgrading gets a bit less automatic.
>
> So overall I think this is "a good thing" - even though it does have one or two downsides.
>
>

     I fully agree that "this is a good thing". There remains one question:

     On my laptop the file 99synaptic contains only one line:
APT::Install-Recommends "false";

     If all the files are read by all apt tools, then the setting meant 
for synaptic applies to all apt tools. If i'd purge synaptic, then the 
behaviour of apt-get might change. Does it make sense? It seems to me 
that this file should contain some indication tnat the setting applies 
only to synaptic.

     Didier

     Didier