On Wed, 6 Nov 2024 18:03:07 +0000 Holger Levsen <hol...@layer-acht.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 06, 2024 at 06:03:45PM +0100, IOhannes m zmölnig wrote: > > Afaict, the problem is that we have 3 options to pick from, and > > it's hard for people to decide which is the "right one". I do not > > see how adding a 4th option will make this decision any easier > > (esp. since that new option is so similar to an already existing > > one). > > absolutly. I have been thinking about it for a while and I am thinking that adding a fourth field really is probably not the right way to go. Then again, given that policy is clear about how Recommends ought to be used and it's pretty clear that there are packages that just don't use it right, I don't think an effort to "fix" the use of Recommends across Debian is going to be terribly helpful because even if it succeeds, people are probably going to make the same mistakes again. (It's not obvious that a field called "Recommends" should only be used for not-quite-vital dependencies, not recommendations in general. The very name of the field begs for people to misuse it.) Any suggestions for how to approach the problem as one of awareness rather than one of technical limitations? > maybe the problem is also related that the original poster didn't > know about the diffoscope-minimal package because it's non obvious > and somewhat hard to find? My use of diffoscope was more to make a point in general about a systemic problem (it was the most extreme example I could think of). However, it is also true that I did not know about diffoscope-minimal, and had I known about it I probably would have picked some other package to illustrate the point. For instance, gwenview currently recommends kamera. gwenview is an image viewer, kamera is a tool for working with digital cameras. Now it is true that kamera enhances gwenview's functionality by allowing it to see pictures on a digital camera that is plugged into the system, but by no means is gwenview useless or even substantially degraded from a functionality standpoint when kamera is missing. It ought to be a Suggests according to Debian policy, but it's obvious why it ended up being a Recommends because it does enable additional functionality that doesn't work otherwise. Aaron > $ apt-cache search minimal|cut -d ' ' -f1|grep minimal$ > cm-super-minimal > diffoscope-minimal > gdb-minimal > haskell-devscripts-minimal > keepassxc-minimal > kde-telepathy-minimal > python3-minimal > libpython3.12-minimal > python3.12-minimal > libpython3.13-minimal > python3.13-minimal > virtuoso-minimal > > are there other similar metapackages? > >
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