Package: libdnet
Version: 2.57
Severity: wishlist
Justification: policy §2.5
Hi,
First of all, thanks for maintaining DECnet tools! I think it's wonderful
that this stuff is available and can Just Work™.
At the moment, I am using a machine that is not meant to be a decnet
node, and the focus of this bug is on improving the packaging to
support that. It seems that through the following chain of
dependencies (all Depends or Recommends):
libroar1 -> libdnet -> dnet-common
the dnet-common package is being installed on many systems that do not
need it. I would like to change that.
As policy explains:
The Recommends field should list packages that would be found
together with this one in all but unusual installations.
popcon data suggest to me that it is not weird but in fact very common
to have libdnet installed on a machine that should not be a decnet
node. We can see this in the popcondata: of the machines submitting
data, more than 5000 have libdnet installed but 13 have dnet-progs
installed. So this is not an appropriate use of Recommends.
This is also borne out in the Priority field: libdnet is "Priority:
optional" and dnet-common is "Priority: extra". Policy §2.5 says
"Packages must not depend on packages with lower priority values",
which seems like a reasonable principle to me. (Unfortunately, it
never spells out whether "depend" here includes Recommends as in
§2.2.1 or is referring to the Depends relation only.)
How about this patch? If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Thanks,
Jonathan
---
debian/changelog | 6 ++++++
debian/control | 5 ++++-
2 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index 6023aad1..da16d33a 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
+dnprogs (2.57+jrn) local; urgency=low
+
+ * Reduce libdnet's recommends on dnet-common to suggests again
+
+ -- Jonathan Nieder <[email protected]> Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:45:33 -0600
+
dnprogs (2.57) unstable; urgency=medium
[ Chrissie Caulfield ]
diff --git a/debian/control b/debian/control
index 38c4d6d4..fe0c2209 100644
--- a/debian/control
+++ b/debian/control
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ Package: libdnet
Priority: optional
Architecture: any
Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}
-Recommends: dnet-common(>=${binary:Version})
+Suggests: dnet-common(>=${binary:Version})
Section: libs
Description: DECnet Libraries
This package contains the libraries necessary for a functioning DECnet
@@ -48,6 +48,9 @@ Description: DECnet Libraries
librms - High level library for programmatic access VMS files
from Linux.
.
+ To do useful work with DECnet you will also need the dnet-common
+ package.
+ .
If you're looking for libdnet, the "dumb" networking library from
libdnet.sf.net by Dug Song then you should install libdumbnet instead.
Sorry for any confusion caused!
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