On Debian and Fedora experiences

[seth vidal]

On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 08:50 +0000, Matej Cepl wrote:
> Jesse Keating scripst:
> > And how do you expect automated tools to handle these soft requirements?
> > Either you always install them, or you never do, which basically brings
> > up the question, whats the point?  Why do this instead of just Requires
> > or not?
> 
> That's sure one possible solution, except that it seems to be against KISS
> principle -- you get miriad new packages (mplayer-aalib, xine-lib-aalib,
> etc. for any weird library there is) just to keep Requires:/Suggests:
> away. May be it is better solution, I don't know, and I don't understand
> this area that much as an engineer (just as an user), but it seems to me
> similar to crazy things dones by Debian people just to be able to keep
> everything inside Debian source package just Makefile.

I don't think anyone is opposed to the idea of suggests/recommends
inherently. I, for one, would just like us to make sure we understand
the policies that it entails. Especially when we think of things like
'enhances' which is a reverse dependency.

The policies have to include:
- default, automatic mode
- default, prompted mode

-sv