Universe Recommends for packages in main

Matt Zimmerman mdz at ubuntu.com
Sun Jul 6 14:54:50 BST 2008


On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 11:29:31AM -0500, Chris Cheney wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 12:31 +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 02, 2008 at 02:46:44PM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> > > At present the number of packages pulled into (e.g.) the desktop CDs as
> > > a result of following Recommends is rather more substantial. However, I
> > > think this is mostly because language-pack-*-base recommends
> > > language-support-*, and once that's fixed most of this should go away.
> > > The list follows for completeness, but don't panic about it just yet.
> > [...]
> > >   gij
> > >   openoffice.org-filter-binfilter
> > >   openoffice.org-java-common
> > >   openoffice.org-writer2latex
> > 
> > When taken together with their own dependencies and recommendations,
> > these packages are pretty huge, and are pulled in solely due to a
> > Recommends from openoffice.org-writer. Chris, would it be acceptable to
> > demote these to a Suggests?
> 
> Obviously we could remove them, but they definitely fall under what is
> considered 'Recommends' level packages for OpenOffice.org...
> 
> Java - lots of OOo functionality requires Java
> ----
> gij
> openoffice.org-java-common
> 
> OOo 1.x filters
> ---------------
> openoffice.org-filter-binfilter
> 
> Latex output
> ------------
> openoffice.org-writer2latex
> 
> This points to a question being: Why are we trying to include Recommends
> on the cd at all since it is nearly oversized already. What goes into
> Recommends are fairly clearly defined in policy, so why are we trying to
> water down Recommends to make it all fit on the cd? Is it to satisfy a
> checklist? ;-)

Recommends are defined essentially the same as depends, except that it
should be possible to remove them if they are not wanted.  They should be
present in "all but unusual installations".  The CD should provide the
necessary software for a "usual installation".

LaTeX output, it could be argued, is not commonly used functionality in
OpenOffice.org, and in fact, might only be useful to folks who use LaTeX
independently.  I think it's a reasonable candidate for Suggests.

Working with OOo 1.x documents seems like Recommends territory.

Java - I don't know which "lots" depend on it, but it managed to be excluded
from the CD in 8.04 without testers noticing.  It would be useful to know
exactly what uses it, so that we can agree on an appropriate package
relationship.

-- 
 - mdz



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