On Sun, Mar 22, 2026 at 12:54 PM Rene Engelhard <[email protected]> wrote: > I don't see an issue to be honest. Maybe a nuisance, yes. > > But I believe this "issue" is just made up or at least made bigger as it is.
It's not a made-up issue. It forces choosing between something like these: 0. Current status quo. Someone installs their desktop with French and gets libreoffice-l10n-fr, libreoffice-l10n-common, and libreoffice-core installed even if the desktop doesn't provide French. This is 268 MB for libreoffice-core and 213 MB for libreoffice-core-nogui which apt may choose instead. Someone else installs their desktop with Amharic and doesn't get Libreoffice support for that language, because the existing language tasks are inconsistent and incomplete. 1. My proposal: Someone installs their desktop with French and gets libreoffice-l10n-fr installed even if the desktop doesn't provide French. This is about 4 MB, but it's not 200 MB. I also do the work to have there be a desktop language task for every LibreOffice language so every language gets this experience. 2. I think I can paraphrase your position by saying that you refuse to make the libreoffice-l10* dependencies on libreoffice-core and libreoffice-common lower than Recommends. One way forward is to make the changes so that everyone who installs Debian in a language other than English will get those 200MB of LibreOffice files installed. 3. Or we don't include libreoffice-l10n in any of the language tasks. 4. Or we add individualized desktop language tasks for every combination of language and desktop. That could add hundreds of binary packages. Maybe I try to use Provides to reduce this number so that the acutal number of binary packages is more like 90+ for desktops that include LibreOffice by default plus another 90+ for the other desktops. 5. Or someone adds a workaround to the Debian installers so that it doesn't install the LibreOffice recommends when LibreOffice isn't installed. This is kinda equivalent to lowering the l10n dependencies on -common and -core to Suggests. It makes the experience different if someone installs the tasks separately afterwards. 6. Eventually, apt should support conditional dependencies. If the Yaru theme is installed and gtk3 is then installed, Debian should automatically install the Yaru gtk3 theme. If Debian has French support installed and then LibreOffice is installed, Debian should automatically install libreoffice-l10n-fr. If someone has KDE Plamsa installed and then LibreOffice is installed, libreoffice-plasma and related packages should be installed. etc. I think this is a popular idea and would make language handling easier, but nobody is working on implementing this. In summary, I think my proposal is beneficial to the most people while remaining a simple improvement. With proposals 1, 2, and 6, people will still get the benefit of LibreOffice language support if their desktop doesn't include LibreOffice by default but the individual installs LibreOffice later. > I don't see a similar bug filed by you against firefox-esr? > > Shouldn't it ideally be consistent? > > (Besides the fact that it probably should do chromium...) Yes, I haven't gotten to Firefox and Chromium yet. Every Debian desktop is installing Firefox ESR currently. Thank you, Jeremy Bícha
