a 1.4 MB package recommended 230 MB of packages :|

[Tom H]

On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Lisi <lisi.reisz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 11 April 2010 20:45:16 Tom H wrote:
>> Both Debian and Ubuntu and both apt-get and aptitude default to
>> installing "recommends" unless you override it temporarily at the
>> command or permanently (unless you override the override at the
>> command) in /etc/apt/apt.conf or /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/<file>.
>
> I am running Lenny.  aptitude definitely _doesn't_ default to installing
> recommends. I don't know about Squeeze and Sid; but Lenny is Debian, so the
> generalisation is clearly not always true.

The "APT" settings apply to both apt-get and aptitude. This is from
the Debian apt changelog (Lenny's latest version of apt is
0.7.20.2+lenny1):

apt 0.7.17:
     - APT::Install-Recommends is now true by default, mentioned this in
       configure-index example. (Closes: #463268)

Furthermore, this is from the aptitude changelog:

aptitude 0.4.11-1
     - Migrate the setting for enabling installation of Recommends from
       Aptitude::Recommends-Important to Apt::Install-Recommends.
       (Closes: #458189, #448561)

The above change was prompted by:

"I use Git to share my key dotfiles, including .aptitude/config, among
various machines.  These machines run various combinations of stable,
testing, and unstable.  Recently, aptitude started transitioning my
~/.aptitude/config from Aptitude::Recommends-Important to
APT::Install-Recommends, and blanking out the former.  While I
appreciate aptitude upgrading my configuration automatically, the
blanking of Aptitude::Recommends-Important makes my .aptitude/config
no longer disable installation of Recommends on systems running older
versions of aptitude.  Thus, I need some way to tell aptitude to stop
changing Aptitude::Recommends-Important in my configuration, or better
yet to let it continue to reflect my choice for "Install recommended
packages automatically" provided through the aptitude preferences UI."