The following has appeared on debian-devel, but might (or might not) be thought more interesting here. I would add to the post my remark that the existing "Recommends:" control field does already provide more or less the metadata the poster suggests, but his point is interesting nevertheless.
----- Forwarded message from Dominique Dumont <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----- From: Dominique Dumont <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Getting rid of circular dependencies, stage 5 Resent-Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 04:18:44 -0500 (CDT) Joey Hess <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Steve Greenland wrote: >> Sure, it allows some one to install foo-data without the program that >> uses it? So what? It's unlikely to happen by accident, and annoying to >> those doing it intentionally. (Just like those foo-docs that depend on >> foo, although they are mostly fixed, now.) > > I don't buy the often-made argument that foo-data packages are > generally useful to install just to look at the beautiful data. As a casual user, if I want the "foo" functionality, I'll probably want to install foo and not even look at foo-data. Another point of view of this problem can be expressed this way: - foo without foo-data is *broken* hence the need for a dependency. - foo-data without foo is not broken (because there's not program to invoke), but is *useless*. May be a better solution would be to flag foo-data as "useless alone". (I would love to be able to hide from aptitude all these "useless alone" packages so I could sift faster in the package list). HTH -- Dominique Dumont "Delivering successful solutions requires giving people what they need, not what they want." Kurt Bittner ----- End forwarded message -----
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