wish: APT::Install-Recommends "false" in server install

[Andreas Olsson]

Binary package hint: apt

It seems as if Jaunty will set APT::Install-Recommends to true by default. I guess that can make sense on a Desktop system.

Dealing with servers you might actually want some more control regarding what's installed. Would it be possible to have the Ubuntu server install explicitly config APT::Install-Recommends as false by default?

EDIT: Well, I guess this change happened already in Intrepid. Except that, the suggestion still stands.

[Brazen (jdinkel)]

I agree that this is nice on the desktop, but I wish it was off by default on server installs.

[Adam Gibbins (adamgibbins)]

This is a horrible horrible design, look at a package like collectd for example - it ships with loads of plugins and thus the package recommends the components for all these plugins. An example is the memcached plugin which ships with collectd, this recommends libmemcache which recommends memcached. So just for installing collectd you've ended up with memcached on your machine.

On a separate note, memcached ships open by default so you now have a public facing memcached server on your machine which people can insert random keys into. Awesome, all because I installed a totally unrelated tool - collectd.

I'm doubtful anyone is ever going to use every single plugin collectd supports - so why are you forcing all those applications on them?

Please fix this, recommendations and suggestions are just that - recommendations not dependencies so please don't treat them as such.

[David Kalnischkies (donkult)]

How should APT detect if it is installed on a server? It simply can't (what is a server after all)

So if you want that to happen, reassign it to a metapackage and ship a config file in it.

But please report incorrect recommends against the package in question!

A recommends is nearly as important as a depends - recommends are installed on ALL but unusual system (as debian policy puts it). So if your system isn't an unusual system (which a server is not, unusual is an embedded device like my phone) the recommends are wrong and should be Suggests instead (or in terms of plugins Enhances: on their side of the dependency tree).

[Adam Gibbins (adamgibbins)]

It can't no (well it could, but it shouldn't), so in my view it shouldn't install anything except the core.
collectd was just an example, there's loads of packages where you're not going to want the recommended installed.

There's nothing to report, as they're not wrong recommendations - they're correct. Just not relevant in every single situation which is what the default apt configuration assumes.

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

Not a bug.

[James Troup (elmo)]

Citation needed. (Julian, please provide a rationale - dismissing a bug out of hand with not justification is not a great way to treat our users.)

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

Changing behavior of a package based on the initial set of installed packages is not an option. We cannot detect whether this was a server install or not. David already explained this. If you really want to, you could reassign it to the relevant installer component or server meta package and let that create a configuration file in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/. But guessing wishes is not APT's job.