On Wednesday, August 31, 2005 4:10 PM, Bob Proulx <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Package: spamassassin > Version: 3.0.3-2 > Severity: wishlist > > The spamassassin package depends upon spamc. But the spamassassin > package is quite useful without the spamc package installed. > Depending upon spamc makes it inconvenient to test upgrades. Please > remove the depends spamc from the spamassassin package and make this a > recommends spamc instead. > > I can guess why things are this way. So that the clueless newbie who > installs spamassassin gets spamc without thinking. And I can live > with that. But it was annoying me and I could find no information in > the BTS about it. It's that way because woody contains a single source package - spamassassin - from which spamc was then split out. The dependency is there to ensure that upgrades work, and there /is/ information about it in the BTS :-) See #213979 and #178277 for example. Those bugs do say the dependency will be downgraded after sarge's release, so if nothing else it's a gentle prod for the maintainer. :) > Meanwhile the spamc package says in the description: > > This package is useless unless you have spamassassin installed, > either on this machine or another local machine (i.e. a mail > server). > > But it does not depend upon spamassassin. If it truly is useless then > it should Depend: spamassassin. But of course this would make a > circular dependency which is undesirable. But with a recommends then > this would work. The main reason that a dependency is inappropriate is that although spamc needs to be able to connect to a spamasassin instance, that instance need not be on the same machine as spamc (the same reason that, for instance, squirrelmail only recommends an IMAP server, despite requiring one in order to operate). Regards, Adam -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
