Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote: > The first task of a package manager is to ensure a consistent system > state by enforcing Depends. However, it is also supposed to make it > easy to install new software; most users and developers want > Recommends installed, since without them some advertised features of > the software may not function. For those that do not want > Recommends pulled in automatically, it is trivial to turn off.
The problem as I see it is that there are a thousand Debian Developers and they don't share a completely consistent vision with regards to this aspect of the system. Some want a modular system such that Debian can scale from very small devices with little memory and storage through to very large clusters with very large memory and virtually unlimited storage. The scalable group want a Depends that reflects only what is needed. Others only care about their own area such as a fully loaded Desktop. This latter group want to put a lot of "fluff" into the Depends. But those packages were pushed into Recommends and Suggests since they weren't actually needed. As different developers understood the goals differently the package lists for Depends, Recommends, and Suggests weren't optimal for either camp. I disagree with the change too but APT was changed to install Recommends by default so that a default installation of Debian will be a fully loaded Desktop with everything plus some more. It will be big, will require a lot of disk space, and will include a very large set of packages. As soon as any group of a thousand get together to do something it is only natural that they won't share a completely consistent vision and goal. And when users don't share the same vision it creates some friction too. > I end up installing most Recommends, but I do configure my systems > so they are not installed automatically. [...] I prefer the > (aptitude install $package) only pulling in what is absolutely > necessary and I understand the tools well enough to "audit" the > broken Recommends dependencies if I find a feature is missing. I also configure my system to avoid installing Recommends by default and adjust things as needed. Bob
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