Russ Allbery writes ("Bug#681419: Alternative dependencies on non-free packages in main"): > Well, if we want to go this route, we could require use of a virtual > package in all cases like this. Then foo and foo-nonfree would both > Provide: foo (and probably Conflicts: foo), and those who want to can > enable non-free and install foo-nonfree. > > That was one of the options offered in the Policy discussion.
Do we know what proportion of the existing references out of main into non-free/contrib could be done this way ? That would at least solve the problem where we put Recommends: ... | bar-nonfree ... in the metadata, which I think is arguably a problem in itself. It's difficult to argue that that doesn't constitute a recommendation of bar-nonfree. Would we also want to do something to avoid the package managers complaining about nonexistent virtual packages ? I guess they are already happy to ignore references to unprovided virtual packages, and nonexistent packages in general, since they are a common approach for transitions and often remain (beneficially) in the dependencies for years afterwards. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20485.19667.646721.533...@chiark.greenend.org.uk