Your message dated Mon, 28 Sep 2015 21:12:47 +0100
with message-id <[email protected]>
and subject line Re: Re : Bug#393494: should list suggested packages when I
request an install in CLI mode
has caused the Debian Bug report #393494,
regarding The following packages are RECOMMENDED... OK, but how about the
SUGGESTED?
to be marked as done.
This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.
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--
393494: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=393494
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact [email protected] with problems
--- Begin Message ---
Package: aptitude
Version: 0.5.9rc2-1
Severity: wishlist
I install a package. (Note, I always use the command line, not the
aptitude GUI or whatever).
I see
The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed:
That is nice but why, why, why don't you also mention what is Suggested?
E.g., I install gnuplot-x11. I wonder "where is the documentation for
this thing?"
Well, there it is, mentioned right there in the Suggests:, but aptitude
doesn't mention it to me. All aptitude mentions is Recommends, making me
think that that is all I need to be aware of.
Sure, other packages mention their -doc packages in Recommends, but some
do so, and also mention other packages that one should be aware of, but
no... no mention of them from aptitude.
Sure one can use
# aptitude -o ...Suggests...
but there isn't a configuration variable available to turn listing of
Suggests on. In fact it should be on by default, with a variable
available for those who want to turn it off.
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Control: forcemerge -1 718904
Control: tags -1 + wontfix
Hi Jason,
2006-10-19 10:41 Jason Spiro:
2006/10/18, Daniel Burrows <[email protected]> wrote:
Jason Spiro wrote:
I do not know any examples where aptitude *does* show suggestions.
Ah, my mistake. I remembered there was code in there to do this, but
I forgot that it only activates in verbose mode. (-v) Enabling it all
the time might be a good idea, although I'm worried about spamming the
user with tons of messages.
I don't know which is the right choice.
I find the listing of 100+ upgradable packages that were held back a
bit spammy :) but that's just my personal opinion.
And therein lies the problem. Some people think that showing
"upgradable packages but not upgraded" are spammy, other people think
that showing "suggested" are spammy, or even "recommended" (many people
disable the option by default of installing recommended dependencies).
Printing the suggested dependencies when you install one or a few
packages is fine, but if you install 50 (happens easily if you select a
package high in the stack, not to mention KDE or GNOME meta-packages),
or full dist-upgrades, printing Suggested in addition to all the rest of
the overwhelming wall of text is probably for nobody's benefit. And in
general, the complaints about the verbosity far outweight those who
think otherwise.
Additionally, in practice, I think that it would not work very well.
For example, libc6 suggests glibc-doc, which is installed in virtually
100% of Debian systems (at least, Linux flavours). Printing this
information every time that every user installs or ugprades this
package, if they are not programmers using GNU libc directly, is of very
little use for them. (The -doc of many GNU packages is in non-free,
BTW, so if you only have "main" enabled you cannot install it directly
anyway). Multiply that for many similar occurrences in 800+ packages of
section "libs" that I have on my system, a fairly tipical desktop.
Apart from all that, there is a wide agreement in Debian that
Recommended deps should be treated as important, whereas Suggested not,
so very few packages bother to keep this up to date anyway.
So, because all of the above, I think that enabling this by default and
adding more information in addition of what is already printed is not a
good idea, and tying the option of printing the information about
Suggested dependencies to the '-v' option is a quick workaround and
fitting.
I am closing the bug report as well, because after 9 years and ~15 of
aptitude behaving in the same way, it is clear that this is not going to
be changed.
Cheers.
--
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <[email protected]>
--- End Message ---
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