Bug#649376: gnome: Dependency on totem-mozilla violating Debian-Policy

[Josselin Mouette]

Le lundi 21 novembre 2011 à 00:20 +0100, Oliver Rompcik a écrit : 
> That's an non-logical abstraction. Following this the metapackage could be
> dependend on everything.

Sure. Feel free to package a “everything” metapackage, that depends on
all packages in Debian. It should come very handy.

> But following Debian Policy, expecially Chapter 5 and 7, a dependency is
> defined absolute precisely. It is written for "depends" that "This
> declares an absolute dependency". And here the requirement for such a
> dependency is not met.

Why are you wasting so much time splitting hair? Is it your job, or just
a hobby?

> But I'd like to repeat my question, which is still unanswered:
> 
> Is there any technical reason for gnome beeing dependend on totem-mozilla
> (and why especially totem-mozilla, not for example mozilla-plugin-vlc)?

BECAUSE METAPACKAGES ARE NOT A SUPERMARKET.
Can you read?

> Or is it just YOUR preference, beeing one of totem's authors?

No. Totem is part of the GNOME applications moduleset. VLC is not. VLC
will probably never be, since it has very poor integration with GNOME.
And since METAPACKAGES ARE NOT A SUPERMARKET, you don’t get to choose.

> You know, gnome is an essential package

I don’t see the “Essential: yes” tag.

> So what stands technically against altering the Depends to Suggests??

Nothing. This is not a technical issue. It’s just that METAPACKAGES ARE
NOT A SUPERMARKET. You don’t like metapackages, you are not forced to
use them.

-- 
 .''`.      Josselin Mouette
: :' :
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