Hi, based on some discussion on IRC I want to propose install profiles.
Recommends: foo <bar> Suggests: foo <bar> The syntax is the same as for build profiles, and it is allowed in Recommends and Suggests fields only (maybe Enhances?). dpkg changes needed: - Introduce /var/lib/dpkg/profiles with one profile per line and commands to manage the list dpkg --add-profile <profile> dpkg --remove-profile <profile> dpkg --print-profiles - Introduce apt commands: apt add-profile apt remove-profile These call the dpkg command and then install newly activated Recommends or remove Recommends no longer active. Alternatively, dpkg doesn't need to care about which profiles are active and apt manages the list. Or one could invert the list and say we add profiles we do not want. This might come in handy with profile inheritance, where e.g. foo profile might imply bar by default, but then you can request "foo !bar" for your system. Gentoo use flags have a default state, it seems reasonable to follow the same approach, so you would have enable-profile disable-profile reset-profile or something and the repository could declare default profiles. This allows users to customize their systems and avoid installing recommends they don't want. -- debian developer - deb.li/jak | jak-linux.org - free software dev ubuntu core developer i speak de, en
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