[Bug 1266163] Re: Apt Install-Recommends set to false

[David Kalnischkies]

It's indeed silly to disable recommends, but many people insist on doing
it instead of insisting on package maintainers to use recommends
properly for the benefit of all.

APT installs recommends since Debian Lenny (no idea what animal that
would be in Ubuntu) by default. Especially, it isn't shipping a
00recommends file. That is a file either shipped by another package or
created by you (or via one of those crappy install scripts floating
around the web). If it's from a package "dpkg -S
/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00recommends" will tell you which package it is. If
not, all bets are of and you have to remember what you did in the past.

Whoever created that file, you should complain about it – and feel free
to add that apt upstream is "not amused" about that as well – but as it
isn't shipped by apt, so we are the wrong receiver, and I am therefore
closing this report here.

** Changed in: apt (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Invalid

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1266163

Title:
  Apt Install-Recommends set to false

Status in “apt” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  Ok, first of, i'm in Linux Mint, but as far as i can see, its using
  the same ubuntu apt package. So the same problem should still be there
  with Ubuntu, please correct me if i'm wrong.

  Before going further, maybe someone could confirm the content of
  /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00recommends, and look for any other ??recommends
  files. I would like to know if there is a difference when installing
  from Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Desktop. i might end up installing both
  to check but i would like to avoid it if possible.

  I understand that there might be a reason why this being set to false
  "might" be a good thing in Ubuntu Server for example. But its
  definitly bad for a Desktop system.

  Here is an example, installing pipelight from their ppa. With Install-
  Recommends to false you get a bug when using dual screen because with
  the missing xinerama lib, wine gets the wrong screen size and you get
  only half of the image when in fullscreen.

  So, why not just put the xinerama lib as a dependency instead of a
  recommend on the pipelight package? Because it would be wrong.

  If we look at http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/ch-
  pkg_basics.en.html#s-depends for a clue of what recommends are,
  recommends are the package that are NOT absolutely needed for the
  package to be installed and run, but that most users would want to
  have. So in the light of that, i strongly think that having Recommends
  set to False by default is bad.

  Someone installing a server would more likely be capable of setting
  this to false himself than a simple desktop user would be to find out
  why somepackage is not working as intended because of a missing
  recommended package.

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