puredyne-team team mailing list archive

[Claude Heiland-Allen <claudiusmaximus@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dan,

I've run into similar issues lately, thanks for mentioning it here to 
remind me how important it could be.

Dan Stowell wrote:
> Hi -
>
> The scvim breakage is really simple to solve, it just needs
> vim-addon-manager installing. But I want to ask yall about something.
> In the supercollider control file, scvim lists "Recommends:
> vim-addon-manager" and ubuntu policy is for "recommends" things to be
> installed by default. I take it this isn't the p:d policy since it
> isn't installed. (Also other things I bugtracked - unhtml, w3m-el -
> are listed as "Recommends" items so I see now what was going on.) Is
> it deliberate?

Ubuntu has a policy (as far as I know, I should look it up to be sure) 
that the different components of the repositories (main, universe, 
restricted, multiverse) can only Depends: on each other in certain ways 
- so universe packages can Depends: on main packages, but not the other 
way round, and so things that could/should really be Depends: are 
downgraded to Recommends: which makes Recommends: more important than 
they should be, at least some of the time.

http://qa.ubuntuwire.org/debcheck/debcheck.py?dist=karmic&list=withinuniverse&arch=ANY

(Quite interesting lists on that site)

> Ideally I'd keep the ubuntu and the p:d packaging fairly well
> synchronised. But there's this packaging difference. A few different
> ways it could be resolved:
>  - tweak the control file specifically for p:d, promoting those items
> from "Recommends" to "Depends".
>  - tweak the control file for ubuntu generally, in the same way - a
> bit wrong since they aren't technically full dependencies.
>  - add things like vim-addon-manager to the explicit list of packages in p:d.

I think this is the way to go, if we want to fit all the software we 
really want on a CD.

>  - p:d could add "recommends" things by default.

This would explode everything in size, because it's recursive - similar 
discussions here:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2008-July/025709.html

"""
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? ;-)
"""

But maybe worth trying to build a test CD+DVD with Install Recommends 
and see how big it gets?

> Would like to know what you think.
>
> Cheers
> Dan

Thanks,


Claude