On Mon, 29 Nov 1999, Wichert Akkerman wrote: > Enhances works in the opposite direction from Suggests: it allows a > package a to state that it can enhance the functionality of a > package b. So instead of package b declaring a Suggests on package > a we now make package a Enhance package b.
Are you sure, that this works in the practice?
I just looked at my packages and see, that transfig suggests
netpbm-nonfree (it is needed to create GIF images with transfig).
Your proposal means, that I should remove netpbm-nonfree from
transfig's suggests and add "Enhances: netpbm-nonfree" to
netpbm-nonfree.
Is this really the correct way? Why does the maintainer of
netpbm-nonfree have to change his package every time some package from
main suggests it? This may be political correct, but it is not
logical or consistent.
> Using this we can remove all Suggests from packages in main to
> packages outside of main by replacing them with an
> Enhances-declaration in the non-main package.
That's the theory. The practice may be, that it will take a long time
until the "opposite" package implements the "Enhances" header.
Another disadvantage of this idea: It only works with a patched
dselect, but if I (as a human) want to quickly see, which packages are
needed (by doing a dpkg --print-available foo), I don't have a chance
to find out, what packages are suggested. Instead of this, I always
have to look at the non-free package list (or let some program do
this), which packages enhance the package foo. I'm not sure, whether
this is really a step forward.
Ciao
Roland
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