HardyRecommendsHandling
Please check the status of this specification in Launchpad before editing it. If it is Approved, contact the Assignee or another knowledgeable person before making changes.
Launchpad Entry: hardy-recommends-handling
Packages affected: apt-get, synaptic, adept
Summary
Debian is about to switch to installing recommends by default (the debian policy says they should be installed in all but the most unusual situations). We need to decide if/when we are going to follow.
Release Note
TBD
Rationale
Recommends are a powerful way of declaring that a dependency is strongly encouraged but not absolutely essential for the package to run. This makes our packaging more flexible.
Use Cases
- Bob has limited vision. He installed gnopernicus and is supsrised that gnome-mag does not get installed (it is "only" recommended gnome-mag)
Design
If we enable recommends by default, we get ~20 new packages in the default ubuntu-desktop. The list can be checked via: $ sudo apt-get install --fix-policy --install-recommends -o Debug::pkgDepCache::AutoInstall=1
Implementation
No changes to apt-get are required (just to flipp a switch). Synaptic should get improved support in the UI for recommends.
UI Changes
The "mark changes" dialog in synpatic should get support for recommends.
Migration
We should consider making it easy for the user to get the missing recommends. A synaptic filter for "not installed recommends" or something similar would be good.
Test/Demo Plan
TBD
Outstanding Issues
Is hardy the right time for this (being a LTS etc)? Or should we postpone the changes to hardy+1?
BoF agenda and discussion
Use this section to take notes during the BoF; if you keep it in the approved spec, use it for summarising what was discussed and note any options that were rejected.