excessive Recommends

[Colin Watson]

Binary package hint: openoffice.org

Telling apt to install Recommends on a system with openoffice.org installed causes the following packages to be installed:

  openoffice.org-filter-binfilter openoffice.org-filter-mobiledev openoffice.org-style-andromeda openoffice.org-style-crystal openoffice.org-style-hicontrast openoffice.org-style-industrial openoffice.org-style-tango

This seems excessive; should these be dropped to Suggests?

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

The filters probably should stay as Recommends but the themes could be demoted. Unless it is really needed to demote the filters as well?

Chris

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

binfilter is pretty huge and only for very old file formats. I don't think we want to install it by default, which is what Recommends will mean in the new world order.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

After thinking about it some more I guess I must be confused as to why we are installing Recommends by default at all if we don't want packages that should be in the "Recommends" line to be in recommends any more due to recommends being installed by default.

"Recommends: Used for packages that are highly recommended and usually are installed with the package. Some package managers, most notably aptitude, automatically install Recommended packages."

The openoffice.org package is a meta-package that is really intended to install all of openoffice.org so (imho) really all of openoffice.org should be in the Depends line with the exception of translations. There was talk in the past to demote openoffice.org-base out of the Depends line (iirc). I think the real solution should be not to install 'openoffice.org' using the installer if we don't want the user to have all of openoffice.org (wrt filters etc since the user won't normally find these on their own). However, I do agree that the packages other than openoffice.org like openoffice.org-common (wrt styles) shouldn't have these Recommends so that it is easier to separate out what doesn't need to be installed.

I am open to other ideas/discussion about this topic. And I do agree there is a real bug here in that some of the packages (other than the 'openoffice.org' meta-package) have Recommends that should be demoted.

I hope the above made sense to more than just me... :-)

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

I forgot to mention if we don't want to ship openoffice.org-base it is already a good idea to only seed for the specific openoffice.org apps that we want to be installed eg openoffice.org-writer and openoffice.org-calc. Which would resolve most of this problem after I correct a few of the other packages Recommends.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package openoffice.org - 1:2.3.1-3ubuntu3

---------------
openoffice.org (1:2.3.1-3ubuntu3) hardy; urgency=low

  * debian/control.in:
    - Change openoffice.orgVER-common Recommends openoffice.orgVER-style-*
      to Suggests. Closes LP: #159133
    - openoffice.orgVER-base-core replaces openoffice.org-core (<< 1:2.3.1).
      Closes LP: #181836
    - openoffice.orgVER-core replaces openoffice.org-common (<< 1:2.3.1).
      Closes LP: #181922
  * debian/rules:
    - Add BUILD_SPARC option.
      . Do not build on sparc since buildd frequently ICEs.
  * ooo-build/patches/src680/apply:
    - apply ooo85321.vcl.pixmapleak.diff.
  * ooo-build/patches/src680/ooo85321.vcl.pixmapleak.diff:
    - XFreePixmap patch.

 -- Chris Cheney <email address hidden> Wed, 23 Jan 2008 06:28:06 -0600