On 10/15/25 7:58 AM, Carles Pina i Estany wrote:
On 15 Oct 2025 at 07:46:23, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
On 10/15/25 7:28 AM, Carles Pina i Estany wrote:
I see that the package monitoring-plugins-contrib (version 48.20250420)
suggests python3-boto which is not in unstable.
Suggests like Recommends are not hard dependencies, they need not be
installable.
I think that Recommends should be available in Debian repositories
unless is an alternative to one existing there:
https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#the-main-archive-area
"In addition, the packages in main:
must not require or recommend a package outside of main for compilation or
execution (thus, the package must not declare a Pre-Depends, Depends,
Recommends, Build-Depends, Build-Depends-Indep, or Build-Depends-Arch
relationship on a non-main package unless that package is only listed as a
non-default alternative for a package in main
"
For Suggests: I found that sometimes packages get dropped from Debian
(or renamed) and Suggests are not updated accordingly. E.g. packages
suggesting mozilla, iceweasel, icedove instead of firefox-esr or
www-browser. I thought that boto -> boto3 was one of this. Luckily, it's
not! :-)
Dependencies for the monitoring plugin packages follow their practical effect,
not their Debian policy definition.
From README.Debian.plugins.in:
"
Some plugins require additional libraries. To prevent you from having to
install dozens of further packages that you don't actually need, there is
no strict dependency on those libraries. Rather, they are listed as
recommendations or suggestions.
"
Kind Regards,
Bas
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