On Debian and Fedora experiences

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Wed, 2006-12-06 at 14:58 +0100, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> Am Montag, den 04.12.2006, 08:51 -0500 schrieb Jesse Keating:
> > On Monday 04 December 2006 08:34, Matej Cepl wrote:
> > > And one more I forgot -- I really miss Suggests: and Recommends: Having
> > > aalib required to be installed (take a look at rpm -qi aalib -- do you
> > > think you really need it?) makes me really home-sick after Debian.
> > 
> > And how do you expect automated tools to handle these soft requirements?
> 
> Maybe with a popup: "Foo suggests bar. Do you want to install bar? Y/N"
> 
> For really automated installs/updates the Suggests: should be installed,
> or there should be a method to set this in let's say yum.conf:
> "suggests=1", where 0 would mean no suggested packages.
> 
> > Either you always install them, or you never do, which basically brings up 
> > the question, whats the point?  Why do this instead of just Requires or not?
> 
> Remember the "Require foo or bar?"-thread on this list on June 3rd. As
> another example see
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=215241#c6
> 
How do we address this use case in a sane automated fashion:

- Generally I want Suggests/Recommends installed to get the full
experience.  So I have Suggests: 1
- I don't have bluetooth on my machine -- I uninstall the bluetooth
stack.
- I install a new calendaring program which has the ability to sync with
a cellphone using bluetooth.  The package has a "Suggests:
bluetooth-stack" type thingy.  That reinstalls the bluetooth stack.
- I uninstall bluetooth.
- I upgrade the calendaring program and the package manager sees
suggests again -- it reinstalls bluetooth.
- I uninstall bluetooth.
- Repeat.

Perhaps the dep solver would have to keep track of which suggests it has
already installed once.
[Package]    [suggestion]
thunderbird  libimap-client

- Install evolution which suggests bluez-libs; install bluez-libs as
well.  Add it to the dep solver's db.
[Package]    [suggested]
thunderbird  libimap-client
evolution    bluez-libs

- On update, the dep solver sees that it has already installed bluez due
to suggests and doesn't attempt to add it to the transaction again.

- On another update evolution has added a suggests for a new library;
install it and add it to the dep solver's db.
[Package]    [suggested]
thunderbird  libimap-client
evolution    bluez-libs
evolution    libpop-client

- Decide we don't want libpop-client, uninstall it

- On update, thunderbird adds a suggests for that library;  See that
it's already been used as a suggests so do not add it to the package
transaction.  Do add it to the database.
[Package]    [suggested]
thunderbird  libimap-client
evolution    bluez-libs
evolution    libpop-client
thunderbird  libpop-client

- Uninstall evolution removes all the dep solver's entries with
evolution as Package:
[Package]    [suggested]
thunderbird  libimap-client
thunderbird  libpop-client

-Toshio
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