[ubuntu-uk] Issues with APT installing dependencies?

[Matthew Macdonald-Wallace]

On Tue, 2007-11-13 at 21:24 +0000, Kris Marsh wrote:
> On Nov 13, 2007 9:07 PM, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace
> <matthew at truthisfreedom.org.uk> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Since I've upgraded to Gutsy, I've noticed an interesting change in
> > behaviour with apt.
> >
> > If I run
> >
> > apt-get install php5-mysql
> >
> > it doesn't install everything that's required (such as
> > apache2/modphp/mysql-server etc), just a very basic set of dependencies.
> >
> > PHPGroupWare is another good example of this, it only installed the web
> > interface.  Once I had logged in, all I had was the "admin" screen - no
> > email, nothing.
> >
> > Is this just me, or is it a "feature" of apt these days?
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > M.
> >
> >
> > --
> > ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com
> > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
> > https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
> >
> 
> Hi Matthew,
> 
> php5-mysql doesn't require apache to run, nor mysql server. It does
> depend on both php5-common and libmysqlclient15off, however.
> 
> Lets say I wanted to write a command line php application that ran
> every 1hr, and sent a log to a remote mysql server... I wouldn't want
> to install apache2 and mysql-server just to allow this.
> 
> Cheers,
> Kris


Fair enough, a valid point I guess, however it still doesn't explain why
phpgroupware installs a config interface and nothing else, where as
eGroupware installs everything!

Admittedly, I've never tried to package something for .deb before (I was
an avid Gentoo user who got bored with watching the software compile
before I came to Ubuntu!) so it may be something to do with this, it
just seems a bit strange that if I'm installing what appears to be a
LAMP stack, apt doesn't allow you to load everything it requires.

The portage system allows you to specify certain flags in /etc/make.conf
(although it may have now moved!) as follows:

USE="apache2 mysql -X ldap imap"

The above would allow me to install a complete lampstack along with the
servers required for the DB connections and LDAP/IMAP cx simply by
typing 

# emerge -av modphp5

is there anything similar under ubuntu?

Cheers,

Matt