[It's been a while since this message hit the debtags-devel list, thus I include an almost full quote as well as CCing the participants of the discussion, please follow up on debtags-devel@ or CC it in responses]
[Response below] On Mon, 2006-07-31 at 17:14 +0000, Thaddeus H. Black wrote: > The following has appeared on debian-devel, but might (or might not) be > thought more interesting here. I would add to the post my remark that > the existing "Recommends:" control field does already provide more or > less the metadata the poster suggests, but his point is interesting > nevertheless. > > ----- Forwarded message from Dominique Dumont <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----- > > From: Dominique Dumont <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org > Subject: Re: Getting rid of circular dependencies, stage 5 > Resent-Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 04:18:44 -0500 (CDT) > > Joey Hess <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Steve Greenland wrote: > >> Sure, it allows some one to install foo-data without the program that > >> uses it? So what? It's unlikely to happen by accident, and annoying to > >> those doing it intentionally. (Just like those foo-docs that depend on > >> foo, although they are mostly fixed, now.) > > > > I don't buy the often-made argument that foo-data packages are > > generally useful to install just to look at the beautiful data. > > As a casual user, if I want the "foo" functionality, I'll probably > want to install foo and not even look at foo-data. > > Another point of view of this problem can be expressed this way: > - foo without foo-data is *broken* hence the need for a dependency. > - foo-data without foo is not broken (because there's not program to > invoke), but is *useless*. > > May be a better solution would be to flag foo-data as "useless alone". > > (I would love to be able to hide from aptitude all these "useless > alone" packages so I could sift faster in the package list). In the debtags vocabulary there is a tag which seems perfectly suitable to express that: 'special::auto-inst-parts - Secondary packages users won't install directly'. Best regards Ben -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
