* Russ Allbery <r...@debian.org> [181026 00:52]: > I don't know why you would expect otherwise? That seems entirely natural > and expected given that Depends is a stronger relationship than > Recommends, and therefore is naturally a subset of the things that would > qualify as Recommends.
[As The Wanderer said, I was careful not to imply that the definition of Depends could not be said to apply in this case.] > You choose the strongest relationship that is applicable. Actually, I contend that this last statement is incorrect. If the different dependencies are meant to provide a consistent and working system, while allowing system administrators as much flexibility as possible, you should choose the weaker relationship. The use of the specific word "unusual" in the definition of Recommends clearly indicates an exception that should be applied even if the definition of Depends would otherwise apply. If there are situations where an admin would specifically want package A installed, but not package B, even though A apparently does not provide significant functionality without B, this seems to me to be exactly the reason for the wording of the definition of Recommends, and it should take precedence. Using Depends instead of Recommends actually _prevents_ the admin from being able to choose. Using Recommends means that in default situations, the system works as intended; the admin must actively do something to prevent the Recommends from being installed. This might be intentional or accidental; it might be because the admin configured Apt some time in the past and wasn't paying attention when installing the package declaring a Recommends, but it was an active choice on the admin's part. Saying "both definitions apply, lets choose the dependency that does not give the admin any choice" is backwards. If you think about why there seems to be a prevalence (at least according to some) of configuring Apt to not install Recommends by default, the first thing that comes to my mind is that there must be a prevalence of inflating Suggests to Recommends and users don't like that. So now maintainers are inflating Recommends to Depends because less experienced and/or less careful users are filing bugs resulting from their own misconfiguration or lack of understanding. This tendency leads in the wrong direction and is an abuse of the dependency system. ...Marvin
