[arch-general] suggestion for pacman: Recommended packages.

[Dieter Plaetinck]

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:29:03 +1100
"James Rayner" <james at archlinux.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:40 +0200, "Hussam Al-Tayeb"
> <ht990332 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The current case for many packages that use optdepends is as
> > follows. Let's say a package called package1 installs some extra
> > binaries or plugins. Those extra not so used binaries or plugins
> > have extra dependencies (let's call them libsomething) marked as
> > optdepends. so on installation pacman will say something:
> > optional dependency: libsomething needed for package1 plugins to
> > work.
> > 
> > How about instead those extra binary files or plugins are split into
> > another package called package1-plugins and have libsomething as
> > plain dependency?
> > Then on package1 installation, pacman should say something like:
> > Recommended packages: package1-plugins for blah blah functionality.
> 
> This is known as 'debian'. 
> 
> I think it's overkill and offers no practical benefit.

and what problem would that solve?
it is exactly the same "we suggest you install this because it may be
useful to you so we explain it to you in a line of text and you could
take manual action if you want", just a different (and a more
complicated) implementation.