Wichert Akkerman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > I assume we are all aware of the discussion a couple of months ago > > about removing references to non-free from main. There was a consensus > > this should be done and a consensus was formed to do this via a new > > Enhances relation for packages.
On Tue, Nov 30, 1999 at 04:40:14AM -0800, Chris Waters wrote: > That's not what I remember; I don't remember us ever *reaching* a > concensus. Esp. since I was part of that discussion, and *I* never > agreed that that was the best approach! IIRC, RMS suggested it, and > IWJ said he could implement it, but that was all at the very beginning > of the discussion, long before we had anything resembling consensus. As I recall, the discussion kind of died out when people realized that this would require a dpkg change -- at the time, "dpkg change" seemed to imply that several years might go by before the feature became available. > If, e.g, my package can take advantage of Netscape, then it should > be the responsibility of my package, not Netscape, to mention that > fact. Otherwise, Netscape (in particular) may need to have hundreds > of packages listed under "Enhances". Not to mention that fact that it > may require new uploads of Netscape simply to add or remove packages > from Netscape's "Enhances" field. That's simply not a good or sensible > design. It may be ok for gimp-nonfree or tetex-nonfree, where the > "Enhances" is for one-and-only-one package, but it doesn't work for > the great majority of cases. That's solvable: create a virtual package which has a free instance (such as Mozilla) which provides the interface you're taking advantage of. -- Raul
