On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 09:51:54PM -0600, Matthew Dempsky wrote: > Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 05:17:19PM -0600, Matthew Dempsky wrote: > >> It seems like the common case for wanting to install a kernel module > >> source package is to build the module and then install it on the same > >> box. Since the *-source package doesn't really depend on *-utils, why > >> not add a Recommends line? > >> For example, ndiswrapper-source would Recommend ndiswrapper-util, > >> while ndiswrapper-module-* would Depend on ndiswrapper-util still. > >> (Similarly for alsa-*, and any other modules.) > > The build system may not be the same as the system where the package will be > > installed, or one may be a chroot of the other, in which case this is > > needless overhead. > Hence the Recommends instead of Depends. Recommends means "packages that would be found together with this one in all but unusual installations". It is not unusual to have a single designated build machine in an organization, which may or may not ever have the final binary packages installed. > > There is nothing in the -source package that actually requires (or should > > recommend) the -utils package. > Sure, nothing requires the -utils package, but does the fact that the > package it generates depends on -utils not mean the -source package > should recommend it? Why? Installing the -utils package does not make the -source package more or less useful. It only makes the -modules package more useful; until you install the -modules package there isn't actually any use for the -utils package at all. > > A much better fix here is for people to get over the fact that dpkg > > isn't apt. > Am I confusing them some how? Not that I can tell, but the root reason people are asking for this functionality is that they want -utils packages to be installed for them automatically when they use -modules packages; when getting the support packages installed is actually quite trivial with even the slightest bit of advanced planning and/or reading of error messages. The real irony is that, with the package in question, automatically pulling in -utils with -source could cause *more* users' systems to break, because the interface between ndiswrapper-utils and ndiswrapper-modules has changed several times recently in ways that were not backwards-compatible: automatically pulling in the -utils could render the system networkless before you've even started to *build* the modules... -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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