On Sun, Apr 24, 2005 at 11:47:57AM -0400, Stephen Gran wrote: > This one time, at band camp, Jeroen van Wolffelaar said: > > On Sat, Apr 23, 2005 at 06:11:13PM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > > > Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote: > > > > This package is of no use without mldonkey-server, either on the > > > > localhost, or on some other nearby machine. As mldonkey-server is > > > > not in testing at the moment, I think kmldonkey shouldn't either. > > > > kmldonkey merely recommends mldonkey-server to allow it being on > > > > another host; but you'd need another Debian release or a > > > > non-Debian machine to actually use this package. > > > > > > Are you saying that people are not allowed to use other operating > > > systems or obtain software in ways outside of the Debian packaging > > > system? > > > > Eh, no, of course they are. Typically though this happens when the > > software in question in non-free, and then the package would be > > contrib, otherwise, yeah, one would *expect* software in Debian main > > to be self contained -- that is, useable within that release's main. > > It'd be a bit weird to release web forum software only working with a > > MS access database as backend, or xtris without available xtris > > server, etc etc, don't you think? > > Not really. What would be the problem of releasing a mail client that > can interface with MS Exchange, for instance? Or an ntp client without > an ntp server?
Those are all commonly available otherwise, really different from mldonkey. Also an ntp client doesn't recommend an ntp server, as the typical use it to have it on another system, while mldonkey on a different system than the mldonkey gui would be an extremely weird and rare setup. Note policy 2.2.1: | (...) packages in main must not require a package outside of main for | compilation or execution (thus, the package must not declare a | "Depends", "Recommends", or "Build-Depends" relationship on a non-main | package) (...) By means of the Recommends: mldonkey-server, kmldonkey indicates that only in some rare cases you'd not have mldonkey-server locally installed, and realisiticly, that makes perfect sense. > > Note that I consider this different from a typical client program for > > a web service, I would *not* consider an nntp client useless in Debian > > if there (hypothetically) were not a nntp server in Debian, as nntp > > servers are commonly available online. Not so with mldonkey-server > > though, that's a type of server expected to local, and certainly not a > > public service anywhere (because, amongst others, the resulting files > > are ttbomk stored server-side and one is expected to have access to > > them). > > ISTM that this is exactly a client program that needs a network service. > This is not a Depends: like a library dependency, but a depends like irc > client needs irc server. If all the irc servers were removed from > Debian, do we have to pull all the clients as well? Flawed analogy, as pointed out above. Anyway, I'm talking with the mldonkey maintainer to improve that package, I think that's a much more productive use of time than nitpicking over the usefulness of kmldonkey in Debian as it is now -- do you genuinly think kmldonkey is a useful piece of software to have in a distribution if you'd need to install mldonkey-server on some other host? --Jeroen -- Jeroen van Wolffelaar [EMAIL PROTECTED] (also for Jabber & MSN; ICQ: 33944357) http://Jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl
