Hello! On Tue, 23 May 2006 12:21:02 +0200, Bernhard R. Link wrote: > * Jorgen Schaefer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [060523 01:14]: >> One small problem: ratpoison now Depends: on 9menu. While this is >> nice, I find it somewhat obscure that a window manager like >> ratpoison _requires_ a menu application upon installation. It would >> be nice if this would be changed to Recommends:, since it surely is >> not required for ratpoison to work.
As Jorgen, I was quite surprised that ratpoison depends on a menu, so here my thoughts... BTW, I cc:ed the interested people to be sure they read my comments, sorry for the noise in case you're no more interested. > I thought a long time about this. The reason leading me to this > direction were: > > - 9menu if quite tiny. The binary of it is smaller than the > ruby bindings of ratpoison, and the binary make the largest part > of the package. The whole unpacked package, even when rounding all > files to block sizes, would fit within the changelog.Debian.gz of > ratpoison. AFAIK, 9menu is not the tiniest solution. From a first sight, it seems so, but then it's not, ratmenu (which is a 9menu derivative) is better: ===== [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ dpkg -s 9menu | grep Installed Installed-Size: 76 [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ dpkg -s ratmenu | grep Installed Installed-Size: 96 [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ dpkg -s 9menu | grep Depends Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.5-1), libx11-6, libxext6 [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ dpkg -s ratmenu | grep Depends Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.5-1), libx11-6 [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ dpkg -s libxext6 | grep Installed Installed-Size: 108 [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ ===== 9menu requires 76 + 108 = 184K, while ratmenu only 96K. Because of this, if I should depend on a menu, I'll go for ratmenu. From a first point of view, I just tried both menus for the first time and the only difference is that after executing a menu command ratmenu exits, while 9menu waits for another one and so on. > - There is no way to specify that 9menu should be installed when > menu is installed. > > If menu is installed, all halfly capable window managers offer to > start ratpoison with a simple click into the menu. I'd much prefer > to have a nice way back when someone accidentially clicks on > ratpoison, so that admins can install ratpoison for the power > users with a clear conscience. Well, the problem is that even if you've installed 9menu (and menu, obviously), launching 9menu doesn't create a standard Debian menu, so there's no way to return back to the previous WM. Moreover, there're no other informations in the /usr/share/doc/9menu/README (and a README.Debian doesn't exist). OTOH, while ratmenu doesn't create a standard Debian menu the first time you launch it, at least the /usr/share/doc/ratmenu/README provides the necessary informations (in fact, there's a specific script, /etc/X11/ratmenu/debian.menu). Another point for ratmenu is the fact that this one is keyboard-only, as ratpoison :-D Anyway, I'm still convinced that you should not Depends:, but only Suggests:. Thx, bye, Gismo / Luca
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