Universe Recommends for packages in main

[Emmet Hikory]

Kees Cook wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 04:48:09PM -0400, Mathias Gug wrote:
>> As noted during the server team meeting, starting from Intrepid apt
>> installs Recommends by default. However if packages are not available it
>> won't fail.
>>
>> Can packages in main recommend packages in universe ? If not, should the
>> recommends has a MIR written for in order to get promoted to main or
>> should they be dropped to suggests ?
>
> Yeah, AFAIK this is fine.  For example, "inkscape" has a whole set of
> Recommends that are in universe.  I don't think there is any need to MIR
> them.

    Will there be some special logic in the ISO image builders to
build an image without Recommends: ?  If there is, I suspect most
users won't see the benefit of recommends-by-default, and that the
various QA teams will have a harder time determining the apporpriate
solution (upgrades will likely pull recommends, but fresh installs
will not have them).  If there isn't, I would no longer understand the
meaning of the distinction between "main" and "universe": if packages
in "main" could install packages in "universe" with default recommends
(especially as universe is enabled by default in sources.list), how
does it matter in which component a given package resides?

    Given the choice, I think it makes sense to select one of the
following options:

1: All packages in main must represent a closed set with regards to
all of Build-Depends:, Build-Depends-Indep:, Depends:, and
Recommends:.

2: Abolish the concept of "main" vs. "universe".  All packages
germinated from a given seed pot (this needs a better name) must
represent a closed set with regards to all of Build-Depends:,
Build-Depends-Indep:, Depends:, and Recommends: (although a ship seed
need only be a closed set of Depends:, and Recommends:)

3.  Abolish the concept of "main" vs. "universe".  No longer ship
live/install media on CD: always use a DVD that includes all software
that would be installed as a result of the installation of the
relevant meta-package in a debootstrap environment for the target
release.

    Of these, my preference would be for the first until such time as
the archive permissioning model can be adjusted to allow the second.
Despite the wide availability of DVD media and writers, it's just a
lot of bandwidth to download DVDs, even when they are small (~2GB),
and a huge headache to handle multiple different default
configurations.

-- 
Emmet HIKORY