I repeat again: desktop environment and desktop applications are not
the same thing, so they shouldn't be treated as such either.
Il 23/05/2022 01:42, Glauber Baldez ha scritto:
Some considerations for project improvement:
1. Debian should already offer users a minimal installation mode
similar to Ubuntu, without media players, games and office applications.
2. Debian should follow Doug Gwyn's words in stating that Unix was not
designed to stop its users from doing stupid things, as that would
also stop them from doing smart things; the operating system must
trust the user. Writing this, a big problem is not knowing how to
differentiate the desktop environment from desktop applications,
treating these factors as if they were the same thing. For example,
the user cannot be prevented from removing the default web browser
(desktop application) to replace it with another one of their choice
as this breaks the desktop environment. Where's the freedom? I repeat
again: desktop environment and desktop applications are not the same
thing, so they shouldn't be treated as such either.
Hi, thanks for your mail with suggestion to improve the project.
I'm one maintainer of the cinnamon team, in the years I did some changes
to make possible to have minimal installation of cinnamon. cinnamon (the package) without recommends is the very minimal. In some cases users had reported changes that had added unnecessary packages to the dependencies
that I had then modified or removed and made some tests both on debian
and ubuntu but unfortunately I can not do them often because they take a
long time (both installation and quick functional tests) so report or
advice from users are always useful.
cinnamon-core and cinnamon-desktop-environment are 2 metapackage, the
first for minimal desktop environment and second full. In the full one
there are browser, media player and mail client are depends (libreoffice instead is already in recommends), one users recently required to remove browser and media player from depends but I added some alternative
instead (in 5.2.2) thinking that are "essential software" for a full DE metapackage without recommends.
I was wrong and I should move them to the recommends? Any
reply/suggestion from other maintainers or users is appreciated. Sorry
for my bad english.
I support many people with Debian, what I often see is that they remove a package, and then also the meta-package is removed. And later all dependencies of the meta-package are removed by accident.
On Wed, May 25, 2022 at 10:33:22AM +0200, Paul van der Vlis wrote:
I support many people with Debian, what I often see is that they remove a
package, and then also the meta-package is removed. And later all
dependencies of the meta-package are removed by accident.
Not to rain on your parade, but those people should consider upgrading
their Debian installations as since at least apt version 1.1 shipped
before current old-old-stable (that is, they run at best Debian 8 jessie which is covered only by Extended LTS) apt actually marks dependencies
of packages in section metapackages as manually installed if the
metapackage is removed due to the removal of one of its dependencies
– but doesn't if you decide to remove the metapackage explicitly.
So, given:
Package: mydesktop
Depends: texteditor, browser
Section: metapackages
And mydesktop manual, the rest auto-installed:
$ apt autoremove => nothing to be done
$ apt autoremove mydesktop => removes also texteditor & browser
$ apt autoremove texteditor => removes also mydesktop,
but marks browser as manual
(This isn't specific to the autoremove command, it does happen for them
all, even in full-upgrade. It is just easier to see this way.)
Something similar happens for packages which are put in Section: oldlibs
in that they move their manual marking (if they have it) to the
package(s) they depend on and mark themselves auto on upgrade to the
version moving to oldlibs.
As usual, both isn't really specific to apt but implemented in libapt,
so aptitude and co should behave similar as long as the conditions are
met.
Disclaimer: I implemented both a long time ago (somewhat improving on
similar existing behaviour… so even jessie is likely not effected, but
I am too lazy to check and it doesn't really matter that much anyhow)
That said, it is up to the maintainer to decide which section a package belongs to and more importantly if a package is really that central to
the user experience of the metapackage that it must be a depends rather
than recommends.
(And yes, apt installs new recommends in upgrades since literal decades,
so that is absolutely not a reason to use depends…)
Best regards
David Kalnischkies
apt actually marks dependencies
of packages in section metapackages as manually installed if the
metapackage is removed due to the removal of one of its dependencies
– but doesn't if you decide to remove the metapackage explicitly.
Then I guess there are some other reasons for this to happen notI support many people with Debian, what I often see is that they remove a package, and then also the meta-package is removed. And later all dependencies of the meta-package are removed by accident.
Not to rain on your parade, but those people should consider upgrading
their Debian installations as since at least apt version 1.1 shipped
before current old-old-stable (that is, they run at best Debian 8 jessie which is covered only by Extended LTS) apt actually marks dependencies
of packages in section metapackages as manually installed if the
metapackage is removed due to the removal of one of its dependencies
– but doesn't if you decide to remove the metapackage explicitly.
OK, this was really easy.Then I guess there are some other reasons for this to happen notI support many people with Debian, what I often see is that they remove a package, and then also the meta-package is removed. And later all dependencies of the meta-package are removed by accident.Not to rain on your parade, but those people should consider upgrading their Debian installations as since at least apt version 1.1 shipped
before current old-old-stable (that is, they run at best Debian 8 jessie which is covered only by Extended LTS) apt actually marks dependencies
of packages in section metapackages as manually installed if the metapackage is removed due to the removal of one of its dependencies
– but doesn't if you decide to remove the metapackage explicitly.
explainable by "these peoiple just run jessie".
On Thu, May 26, 2022 at 03:28:21PM +0500, Andrey Rahmatullin wrote:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I support many people with Debian, what I often see is that they remove aNot to rain on your parade, but those people should consider upgrading their Debian installations as since at least apt version 1.1 shipped before current old-old-stable (that is, they run at best Debian 8 jessie which is covered only by Extended LTS) apt actually marks dependencies
package, and then also the meta-package is removed. And later all dependencies of the meta-package are removed by accident.
of packages in section metapackages as manually installed if the
[…]OK, this was really easy.metapackage is removed due to the removal of one of its dependenciesThen I guess there are some other reasons for this to happen not explainable by "these peoiple just run jessie".
– but doesn't if you decide to remove the metapackage explicitly.
# apt update && apt install task-kde-desktop && apt remove konqueror
Sure, it just means upgrading from jessie won't help actual users.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^I support many people with Debian, what I often see is that they remove aNot to rain on your parade, but those people should consider upgrading their Debian installations as since at least apt version 1.1 shipped before current old-old-stable (that is, they run at best Debian 8 jessie
package, and then also the meta-package is removed. And later all dependencies of the meta-package are removed by accident.
which is covered only by Extended LTS) apt actually marks dependencies of packages in section metapackages as manually installed if the
[…]OK, this was really easy.metapackage is removed due to the removal of one of its dependencies – but doesn't if you decide to remove the metapackage explicitly.Then I guess there are some other reasons for this to happen not explainable by "these peoiple just run jessie".
# apt update && apt install task-kde-desktop && apt remove konqueror
task-kde-desktop has Section: tasks (as does all the other task- packages
as they are built from the same source package).
On Wed, 25 May 2022 20:21:03 +0200, David Kalnischkies <david@kalnischkies.de> wrote:
apt actually marks dependencies
of packages in section metapackages as manually installed if the >metapackage is removed due to the removal of one of its dependencies
– but doesn't if you decide to remove the metapackage explicitly.
That sounds nice and it's probably good to avoid accidental mass
removals, but it makes the "manual" mark kind of a misnomer.
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