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

[Hussam Al-Tayeb]

On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 22:29 +1100, James Rayner 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.

There is a benefit. You quoted part of my email. Did you read the rest?
It also better then downsteam "deciding" which goes to depends and which
goes to "optdepends"