On Wed, 29 Aug 2012, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> On 08/28/2012 06:05 PM, Don Armstrong wrote:[0]
> > People who disable recommends get to deal with any breakage they
> > generate by doing so. Promoting things which should be recommends
> > to depends because of this punishes those who are using the
> > system in the suggested manner.
>
> Uhm why?
See Policy ยง7.2. If the depended-on package is not "required for the
depending package to provide a significant amount of functionality"
but is a package which "would be found together with the [depending
package] in all but unusual installations", it should be a
Recommends:, not a Depends:.
> Each package depends on exactly what it needs to work and recommends
> anything which adds e.g. additional features but doesn't cause
> non-graceful breakage if missing.
Graceful breakage isn't what policy requires; it's whether the package
is a requirement for a significant[1] amount of functionality. [That
said, specifically indicating that a Recommends: or Suggests: package
is required to use certain optional functionality in documentation or
in the actual program output is always a plus.]
Don Armstrong
0: I wrote the above, not Bernd. Please try to avoid incorrect
attribution when you quote e-mail.
1: What significant means is up for interpretation, of course.
--
Rule 6: "If violence wasn't your last resort, you failed to resort to
enough of it."
-- Howard Tayler _Schlock Mercenary_ March 13th, 2005
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20050313.html
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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