On Mon, 01 Aug 2016 14:48:30 +0100
Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@???> wrote:

> Daniel Reurich <daniel@???> writes:
> > Why are we dragging up a thread from over a year ago??
> >
> > I strongly disagree, installing "Recommends" are IMHO reasonable
> > for the common case, and that should stay the default except where
> > the user wants to maintain a really minimal system,
>
> The usually 'recommended' software is the zeroconf/ 'LAN party'
> networking daemon (avahi) which is almost always useless.
>
> More generally spoken, neither Recommends: nor Suggests: declarations
> should exist to begin with: They both represent a perfectly arbitrary
> opinion of the package maintainer and it's not easily possible to
> determine what they'll end up installing or for which reasons.

Let's say Rainer is accurate in the preceding two paragraphs. In that
case, why not, instead of installing recommends or suggests, just list
them in a text documentation file suitable for conversion to
shellscript, housed in a Devuan-unique directory like /usr/share/deps
or something else.

That way, a person can look at the document, see what each recommends
brings to the table as far as enhancements for the package that was
installed, and decide. I spoze it's extra work for the packagers, but
it would really help Devuan people keep their machines clean and crisp.

And it would be unique to Devuan.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
July 2016 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
     of the Successful Technologist
http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques