please sync prboom 2:2.4.7+dfsg-5 from debian sid main

[antiNeo]

Binary package hint: prboom

The prboom package lists freedoom as a requirement, but it shouldn't. Freedoom and prboom are totally different things. Prboom can be used without the freedoom package with any .wad file and the -iwad command switch. It would make sense for freedoom to be a recommended package for prboom, but it makes no sense that freedoom is a dependency. This is a problem for me because I'm running Ubuntu on an eeepc and space can be pretty tight at times.

SOLUTION:
Sync to prboom 2:2.4.7+dfsg-5

[Hew (hew)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You're right, 'boom-wad | doom-wad' should be moved to recommends.

[Hew (hew)]

Going to attempt a patch (my first).

[Hew (hew)]

prboom (2:2.4.7+dfsg-3ubuntu1) intrepid; urgency=low

  * Change Depends to Recommends for boom-wad | doom-wad (LP: #231811)

 -- Hew McLachlan <email address hidden> Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:50:40 +1000

[Jon Dowland (jond)]

If you read the prboom package's description, you should see "PrBoom requires an IWAD to play. A free IWAD is available in the freedoom package. You can install your commercial Doom IWADs using doom-package. ".

The reason for using Depends: is that prboom cannot be used without an IWAD. In Debian therefore, it did not belong in the distribution because it couldn't be used without additional non-free parts (so it would go in contrib).

When freedoom was introduced, it was possible to use prboom using free components (freedoom), so it was moved to main.

You can satisfy the boom-wad | doom-wad dependency by building a package that contains your commercial IWAD if you have one. doom-package in debian does exactly that. I see doom-package is in multiverse, I wonder why.

I think applying this patch would degrade the quality of the prboom package because people could install it, try to run it and it won't work without additional bits.

[Hew (hew)]

Recommends is installed by default, so a user installing prboom will automatically get freedm as well. I could understand the concern if this was being made Suggests, but the user has to go out of their way to remove packages with Recommends.

These packages are not _required_ for prboom because, as the bug description states, you may use prboom with any wad file. Using Depends would be fine if all wad files came in deb packages, but it's a common use case for a user to obtain a wad from a CD.

I'm a bit unsure about what to do here, so it would be great to hear from antiNeo and others about this.

[Hew (hew)]

From debian-policy ( http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html#s-binarydeps ):

Recommends: This declares a strong, but not absolute, dependency. The Recommends field should list packages that would be found together with this one in all but unusual installations.

This sounds right to me. You don't absolutely need boom-wad | doom-wad in order to use prboom, as you can just use it with a wad file. Thoughts?

[Jon Dowland (jond)]

You do need a wad file and prboom is useless without one. I guess you are suggesting that the wad file should be seen as similar to e.g. a JPEG used in conjunction with the GIMP: you don't need to provide a JPEG in a package for GIMP to be in the archive. The difference of course is the GIMP can be used to create a new JPEG from scratch.

With the dependency, people who are not familiar with doom are protected from installing the package and having something that won't work. People who are familiar and own doom can easily build a doom-wad package using doom-package (or game-data-packager). The trouble seems to be that most of the people in this category don't read the prboom package description before installing it (indeed, they seem to blindly hit OK in their package manager enough times to get freedoom downloaded and installed before they notice).

FWIW, I'm the upstream maintainer of the package in Debian.

[antiNeo (antineo2000)]

That is exactly what I thought when I read your first comment. Moreover, if you compare it to something like mplayer, mplayer is completely worthless without any video/audio files. It can't create anything from scratch.

Anyway, if someone was looking to play doom, they would presumably already have wads, would know what a wad is, and realize that prboom is just a wad player. If someone was looking to play freedom, they would simply install the freedoom package without knowing what prboom was. The name prboom is misleading enough as it is, so if someone was installing it they probably already read the description and know what they're doing.

[Hew (hew)]

Remember the difference between Recommends and Suggests. By making it Recommends, users blindly installing prboom will still get freedm on their system as Recommends is installed by default, so these users will not be disadvantaged. The advantage of having Recommends instead of Depends is that users such as antiNeo get the choice of removing the unwanted packages when they just want to use prboom with wad files.

The doom-package description says "Currently doom-package supports DOOM 2 only", so unfortunately this is still not a solution. In any case, the user should be able to use plain wad files if that's what they decide to do.

I cannot see any disadvantage in switching Depends to Recommends in this case. Thanks Jon for taking interest in this issue; it would be great if the patch can be made upstream.

[Jon Dowland (jond)]

> The name prboom is misleading enough as it is, so if someone was installing it
> they probably already read the description and know what they're doing.

I think this bug report is evidence that people *aren't* reading the package description, or they'd know about doom-package and how to avoid installing freedoom.

> By making it Recommends, users blindly installing prboom will still get freedm
> on their system as Recommends is installed by default, so these users will not
> be disadvantaged.

That is certainly a stronger argument now that plain apt installs recommends by default as well as synaptic and aptitude. You could also quote "The Depends field should be used if the depended-on package is required for the depending package to provide a significant amount of functionality." however. I shall raise this on the debian-devel-games mailing list.

(If we're quick, we might get a change in *just* before the Lenny freeze :-) -- not that this impacts you folks much. )

> The doom-package description says "Currently doom-package supports DOOM 2
> only", so unfortunately this is still not a solution.

game-data-packager (a newer version of doom-package) supports doom, doom2 and both of the final doom IWADs. It is currently in the Debian NEW queue so I guess it will make its way to multiverse (or is that something that needs human intervention?): the code is at svn://svn.debian.org/svn/pkg-games/packages/trunk/game-data-packager/ if anyone is curious in the mean time.

g-d-p also installs .desktop files, alternative in /usr/share/games/doom and icons for the menu entries. We will be removing the .desktop file from the engine packages in Debian soon. The installed-size of the package reflects the IWAD size so you have a fair idea of what payload the packages carry in the package manager interfaces. We will be able to introduce hooks to automatically build GL nodes for installed wads too.

[Jon Dowland (jond)]

I've just uploaded -5 to debian which moves the wad dependencies to Recommends:. I received one comment on the games list which was an affirmative.

Whether or not ubuntu decides to use game-data-packager or not is up to you folks, of course. If you opt not to, there's a patch in -5 which adds some descriptive text to the "IWAD not found" error recommending the package - you may want to drop that if it does not exist in the same repo as prboom in ubuntu.

[Hew (hew)]

This bug can now be fixed in Ubuntu by syncing Intrepid to prboom 2:2.4.7+dfsg-5. I have tested this package and it works just fine. With the wad recommends not satisfied:

IdentifyVersion: IWAD not found
prboom requires a doom data ("IWAD") file to use.
please install one, either freedoom or a package built
using game-data-packager.

This is expected, and a useful message. Thanks Jon.

With respect to game-data-packager, I believe that once this is in Debian Sid, it will be brought into Ubuntu for the next version (9.04). Manual intervention will be needed to bring it into Intrepid; I'll keep an eye out for it :-).

[vexorian (vexorian)]

Speaking of which, I think whatever package is required to enable music playback should also be added as a recommended package.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

ACKed.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

[Updating] prboom (2:2.4.7+dfsg-3 [Ubuntu] < 2:2.4.7+dfsg-5 [Debian])
 * Trying to add prboom...
  - <prboom_2.4.7+dfsg-5.dsc: downloading from http://ftp.debian.org/debian/>
  - <prboom_2.4.7+dfsg.orig.tar.gz: already in distro - downloading from librarian>
  - <prboom_2.4.7+dfsg-5.diff.gz: downloading from http://ftp.debian.org/debian/>
I: prboom [universe] -> prboom_2:2.4.7+dfsg-3 [universe].