On Mon, 8 Dec 2003 17:21:28 +0100 (CET), Santiago Vila <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >On Mon, 8 Dec 2003, Marc Haber wrote: >> Policy 2.5 says that packages must not depend on packages with lower >> priority values. From what I tried to research, that rule is meant to >> allow CD builders to build "Debian foo standard" CDs containing >> required, important and standard packages, guaranteed that all >> dependencies are satisfied just from choosing from the Priority. > >Not only that, combined with the rule saying "packages which conflicts >with optional or higher should be extra", people should be able to >forget completely about extra packages when choosing packages without >having unmet dependencies.
Why should they be able to forget about extra packages. I don't see any place where this matters, except CD creation. >> Now let's look at a system where the local administrator has decided >> to use B instead of A. Since E and F are Priority: important, dselect >> happily proceeds to install E and F on the system, even if they are >> not needed since the system in question uses B instead of A. > >So you want postfix but not the dependencies for exim? This is just an example. >Just tell dselect to uninstall E and F. Where is the problem? Manual intervention is necessary here. Most people will see this as a bad bug in the E and F packages. >You will only have to do this once and dselect will remember that you >don't want E and F installed (unless they are required later by another >package). Everybody using B will have to do this once. >The dependency rule is still useful for those who trust Debian having >good defaults and want to forget about extra packages. Why would anybody want to forget about extra packages? >The deborphan package provides a much better way of getting rid of >unwanted packages which are installed only because of dependencies, >have not you tried it? I am locally using debfoster. But not all people do that. Greetings Marc -- -------------------------------------- !! No courtesy copies, please !! ----- Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Karlsruhe, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom " | Fon: *49 721 966 32 15 Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fax: *49 721 966 31 29
