[SCM] grass branch, master, updated. upstream/6.4.1-27-ga3684bb

[Hamish]

> > The following commit has been merged in the master
> branch:
> > commit a3684bbe6e123148ffa771058c25029053cb6366
> > Author: Hamish Bowman <hamish_b at yahoo.com>
> > Date:   Thu Sep 15 20:55:18 2011 +1200
> > 
> >     recommends things needed to make g.extension work

Francesco:
> 
> I would avoid in general recommendations for those things,
> 
> with default settings all recommendations are installed as
> well and grass already has a long list of dependencies...
> Suggestions would sufficice IMHO.

that recommends was chosen on purpose with the default settings
in mind, exactly so that packages needed to use the grass-dev
package successfully are automatically installed when you
install the grass-dev package. (which itself is not recommended
or suggested by anything, so this doesn't add to the bulk of
grass unless the user specifically asks for it)

the primary 95% reason most people will install the grass-dev pkg
is to use the g.extension module, which needs those two to work.

The balance I think is to make the bare-bones version available
for power/embedded users, and the out of the box ready-to-go
version available for e.g. downstream ubuntu users who won't have
a clue about build-essential, etc. .. for them the recommended
set "just works".


> grass already has a long list of dependencies...

That is always something to consider, but IMHO it's mostly
irrelevant as from my POV the choices should be primarily
made by:

 - if the core package will not function without it ->
      Depends:

 - if the main package has many things which need it, but fails
   gracefully if they're not there ->
      Recommends:

 - if the package has one small thing or another which can make
   use of it, if it's present ->
      Suggests:


and then let the bytes fall where they will.


If a standard end-user does 'apt-get install grass' I want them
to get a fully functioning bit of software, not just a stripped
down embedded version and then complain that things don't work.
(like the ubuntu bug report I got yesterday from an ubuntu user
I was helping with what is in my opinion unneeded "some assembly
required" additional steps)


2c,
Hamish


ps- these days since disk space is cheap, I wonder if we can
finally ship a gmt-coast-high package instead of needing to run
the bundled script to get that.