Steve Langasek wrote: > On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 05:06:39PM +0100, David Paleino wrote: >> In fact, when removing any dependency of the meta-package, it gets >> removed as well, and all other dependencies become *leaf packages* that >> autoremove will try to remove from the system. This is usually not >> what the users want, as they probably installed (or had it by default) >> the meta-package to have a "standard" environment, but don't want or >> need specific packages. > > Have you looked at the prior art in this area in Ubuntu?
Nope, sorry, didn't even know Ubuntu treated metapackages in a special way. > Ubuntu defines a special archive section, 'metapackages', which results in > special tagging/handling of the Depends and Recommends of the package so > that they're not autoremoved if the metapackage is removed. This is > implemented in the high-level package management tools. Well, our proposal prospects something different: the metapackage is not removed (thus everything else is not autoremoved) if one of its Meta- Depends/Depends is removed. > In this scenario, with Recommends installed by default (the only sane > model), On my host, Recommends are not installed by default, and this is configurable. A similar configuration, and meta-packages using Recommends instead of Depends/Meta-Depends, would render them pretty useless. > the vast majority of metapackage dependencies are moved from > Depends to Recommends, so you can remove those Recommends manually without > forcing removal of the metapackage; This already happens now, or did I miss something? Thanks for commenting, David -- . ''`. Debian developer | http://wiki.debian.org/DavidPaleino : :' : Linuxer #334216 --|-- http://www.hanskalabs.net/ `. `'` GPG: 1392B174 ----|---- http://snipr.com/qa_page `- 2BAB C625 4E66 E7B8 450A C3E1 E6AA 9017 1392 B174 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org