[David Coe] > I'll think about this, but ispell requires a wordlist in order for > its "look" command to work. It's not a strict requirement for the > rest of ispell's functionality, which is why the wordlist packages > are recommends and not depends.
Oh. Did not know this. Perhaps it is useful in Debian Edu after all. :) > The policy manual still says that we should recommend "packages that > would be found together with this one in all but unusual > installations." I think a system that tries to minimze disk space > requirements qualifies as an unusual installation, especially these > days, but I guess you could convince me that I'm wrong. For Debian Edu, the focus is on providing packages useful in an educational setting (schools), and thus we remove packages that we believe are not providing any useful funcitonality. So it is not as much minimizing disk space as it is to make sure every byte on the CD and DVD is filled with useful packages. :) > I don't really understand why apt decided to automatically install > recommended packages by default, because I haven't had time to study > the issue, so I'm not going to beat that dead horse here. As far as I know, the new behaviour is according to policy and how dselect have always worked. I believe it is a good idea to have a set of packages that are installed by default but allowed to be removed (recommends), instead of having two set of packages that are only mentioned but not installed by default (recommends and suggests), so I believe the change was for the better. But it will take a while before all recommends are adjusted for this. > Would it hurt or help debian-edu (and other distributions that try > to minimize disk space requirements) if it were to configre apt to > not install recommends by default? Lots of people do that these > days, and every package should still be able to work reasonably well > without its recommended packages (I believe). Well, I believe it is a good idea to have one set of packages that have to be pulled in, one set that normally is pulled in and which can be skipped, and another set of packages that is not pulled in by default, so I believe Debian and Debian Edu is better served with the new functionality. :) Happy hacking, -- Petter Reinholdtsen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
