Hi Ted, On Thu, Dec 05, 2024 at 01:28:11PM -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > In the case of e2fsprogs, server and container image *really* don't > have any need of translations --- and in fact, from my perspective, > it's often actively harmful, when users send me e2fsck logs in > Vietnamese and I have to try to figure out was going on.
I suggest that you completely ignore containers and servers for the purpose of judging Recommends vs Suggests, but take them into account for judging Depends vs Recommends. Basically all of the container image creation tools I've interacted with immediately turn off installation of Recommends so to them Recommends and Suggests behave the same. The slim image variant for docker/podmand goes beyond and deletes much of /usr/share/doc. For server deployments, what is in charge of deciding whether to install e2fsprogs-l10n is probably Ansible, Chef, Puppet or something along those lines. To these areas, the crucial step has been separating the translations into an optional component. Thank you. If you disregard these deployments, e2fsprogs-l10n suddenly becomes relevant to most usual installations. Admittedly, I never install it. The primary values in action I see here are: * Enable advanced people to trim their installations by separating non-essential space consuming parts into optional packages (i.e. exactly what happened with e2fsprogs-l10n). * Have it just work by default (i.e. Recommends). I no longer buy the argument for conserving space when a typical NixOS installation takes 100GB and people are happy with it. As long as we provide the mechanisms to trim installations, those who need to conserve space should be doing the work of opting out. My impression of earlier discussions of this matter is that this opinion should achieve at least rough consensus, but maybe things changed. Helmut
