* Wouter Verhelst <wou...@debian.org> [181025 08:26]: > On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 05:04:11PM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > > But a Depends or Recommends on gnupg > > will annoy 99.9% of the users; > > Err, no. > > That number makes the assumption that all users who have something > installed that they don't end up using will be "annoyed". > > That's just not correct. > [snip] > Of those that do worry, a number may be annoyed, yes. But I suspect that > the number who will be annoyed will be closer to the .1% number you > quote above than the number who will not.
I certainly agree with you that 99.9% is clearly a wrong number for this. However I disagree that even 0.1% justifies using a different definition for Recommends than policy gives. The definition of Recommends specifically uses the word "unusual". Its purpose is to provide flexibility to the clueful admin who has a specific need or use case to avoid installing the recommended package, even when that use case is unusual or uncommon. It allows the admin to continue to use official Debian binary packages to get all the benefits thereof. The purpose of the various dependencies is specifically _not_ to prevent clueless users from submitting bug reports that you believe are useless and a waste of time. Abusing the dependency system as a bug triaging tool at the expense of a small number of admins for this package and another small number for that package, and still more for those other packages with inflated dependencies is simply _wrong_. With that logic, we might as well give up Recommends completely and always use Depends. Recommends is for when Depends would be right, but there are some useful edge cases where the admin might not want the dependent package installed. ...Marvin
