On Tue, Feb 08, 2005 at 10:32:50PM -0200, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: > On Wed, 09 Feb 2005, John R. McPherson wrote:
> Anyway, all of this, assumes you are using apt-get, which might not be the > case. But still, if you ignore a "Recommends", you are asking for less than > the full functionality of a package. In timidity's case this only means you > need to edit the config file. For other packages, it might mean it cannot > deal with certain data-types, etc. I can't see any bugs in the timidity > packaging in this case, either. Yes, I am using apt-get. It was more the fact that upgrading timidity broke things when I had a patch set installed. I've had timidity-patches installed for years, and didn't realise (or remember) that they weren't in main any more, so I guess you can only depend/recommend packages that are in main. I don't think I've ever had a package stop working before if I didn't have a Recommended package installed, but I can't see a better way in this case. > > The Depends field should be used if the depended-on package is > > required for the depending package to provide a significant > > amount of functionality. > > The current reading for this is "the package breaks horribly, segfaulting or > otherwise failing to run because of missing dynamic libraries or essential > data files, *and* there is nothing to be done to fix the issue other than > installing the missing packages". > > > Recommends > > This declares a strong, but not absolute, dependency. > > Which is the case here, since timidity does not in any way require freepats. > You just need to edit the config file. Ok. I guess that makes sense. I can edit the config file, but less technical people might have problems. Hopefully they'll have freepats installed. > For freepats (and any other package) to modift timidity.cfg, I would have to > stop shipping it inside the deb. That means I have to add a lot of code to > the timidity package for little gain, AND that it is likely that I would now > have to deal with the far worse scenario of freepats screwing up someone's > custom timidity.cfg file. Sorry, this is an alternative that I am not > prepared to implement at this time (and likely, never will be). Ok, well I can't see a better way, other than manual intervention :/ This all documented in the README.Debian file, so maybe that will have to do. Thanks anyway. John -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
