On Wed, 27 Jan 1999, Richard Braakman wrote: > reassign 29874 debian-policy > thanks > > Santiago Vila wrote: > > > Policy says: > > > > optional [...] This is all the software that you might reasonably > > want to install if you didn't know what it was or don't have > > specialised requirements. > > > > A common interpretation of this policy is that the user *should* be able > > to install all optional packages without having to resolve any conflict > > (because it is assumed that the user will not reasonably want to install > > packages that conflict at each other). > > > > [ If this is not the right interpretation of the policy, feel free to > > reassign it to the debian-policy package so that it is discussed properly ]. > > I've never seen it interpreted this way before, except by you. It > doesn't say "all the software that you might reasonably want to install > all at once".
I'm not the only one who thinks this is the case, at least Martin Schulze and Enrique Zanardi agree with me on this (see debian-devel). You don't need to install *everything* for these conflicts to appear: Suppose we have two conflicting optional packages A and B, that I don't know what they are and I don't have specialised requirements. Because A is optional, the definition says that I might reasonably want to install it. Because B is optional, the definition says that I might reasonably want to install it also. So the definition says that I might reasonably want to install A, and I might reasonably want to install B, but this is a contradiction, since nobody reasonably will want to install conflicting packages. Is this more clear now? You don't have to install everything for these conflicts to appear, just choose any two which conflict, try to reasonably install both, and see what happens. -- "d6ce31b7d082169b5e81c80941624766" (a truly random sig)
