Quoting Yves-Alexis Perez (2016-09-27 21:21:49) > On mar., 2016-09-27 at 16:20 +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > > Package: gtk2-engines-murrine > > Version: 0.98.1.1-6 > > Severity: normal > > > > I want to install greybird-gtk-theme, and only that theme. But due > > to gtk2-engines-murrine recommending murrine-themes, effectively I > > get a bunch of themes when I wanted only one. > > Then just don't install recommends, or remove murrine-themes > afterwards.
That is not simple, and not how Policy describes the use of "Recommends": The individual themes are not required "in all but unusual cases" (as I recall it is phrased). > > Package relationships are _directional_: > > I do know about that… > > > > Having murrine-themes recommend greybird-gtk-theme is sensible, > > because (some of) its contents has little use without the contents > > of that other package. > > Actually murrine-themes recommends the various -gtk-themes because > they were once included in the package, and are not split out. So in > order to prevent breakage for users, we chose to add the recommends so > the themes are installed by default, like before. So it's completely > unrelated to the usefulness, murrine-themes can work perfectly fine > without greybird-gtk-theme. The way to solve that is to have murrine-themes be a metapackage, move its content to one or more -common or -data package(s) - preferrably splitting content to packages specific to each theme. >> Having gtk2-engines-murrine recommend recommend murrine-themes is >> less sensible, as its contents is perfectly usable without the >> contents of that other package. > > The point of that recommends is that gtk2-engines-murrine by itself > doesn't do anything (it's just a gtk2 engine), you usually want themes > with it, thus the recommendation. libraries generally don't do anything by themselves, yet it is not their concern to depend on their consuming applications and libraries. libgtk3 does not depend on gnome and cinnamon stuff, only the other way around. > > What would be sensible is to a) drop gtk2-engines-murrine recommends > > on murrine-themes, and b) have murrine-themes declare that it > > _enhances_ gtk2-engines-murrine (i.e. a reverse suggestion). > > Are enhances / reverse suggestion actually handled by the various > package managers? I mean, are they installed by default when > installing the enhanced package? Because that's what we want to > achieve. For achieving that, separate into a metapackage with recommends and -common or -data packages _without_ any recommends. > > NB! I notice the recommendation is versioned. If reason for that > > is to avoid older versions being outright broken (e.g. due to > > bug#827134), then it does not work as intended (only versioned > > _depends_ is certain to be obeyed). Use a versioned _breaks_ > > instead. > > so something like: > > Recommends: murrine-themes > Breaks: murrine-themes (<< 0.98.1) Specifically addressing the versioning, yes. Does not address the issue on topic for this bugreport. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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