Bug#750755: libmime-lite-perl: nullmailer and mail-transport-agent should be in suggests rather than recommends

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting gregor herrmann (2014-06-06 19:27:45)
> On Fri, 06 Jun 2014 18:44:39 +0400, Stanislav German-Evtushenko wrote:
>
>> libmime-lite-perl installs nullmailer or mail-transport-agent by default as
>> it is in recommends. It seems not a proper behaviour.
>> 
>> For example, if I install apt-dater-host it installs imvirt (Recommends),
>> imvirt installs libimvirt-perl (Depends), libimvirt-perl installs
>> imvirt-helper (Depends), imvirt-helper installs libmime-lite-perl (Depends)
>> and libmime-lite-perl installs nullmailer or mail-transport-agent
>> (Recommends).
>> 
>> So if I install apt-dater-host it also installs nullmailer or
>> mail-transport-agent and asks to configure SMTP host which is not required
>> for apt-dater-host to work.
>
> Thanks for your bug report.
>
> We could move nullmailer|MTA from Recommends to Suggests. I'm just
> not sure this is a good idea, since the libmime-lite-perl
> documentation talks about sending mails via sendmail ...
> (And "Recommends" means you don't have to follow the recomendation.)
>
> Here's the commit where we moved it from Depends to Recommends 6 six
> ago:
> http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-perl/packages/libmime-lite-perl.git;a=commitdiff;h=592f06fe2d8b056c7fceca7ba1922bd95e057bea
> and the related bug, which also is about Depends → Recommends or
> Suggests:
> https://bugs.debian.org/462314
>
> Other opinions?

I believe generally that...

 a) libraries should at most suggest daemons, and
 b) relating to MTA should favor default-mta (not nullmailer)

I see no reason for different logics for this library in particular.

I believe concretely relation should be relaxed to only suggest, and to 
favor default-mta.  Additionally reverse dependencies should probably be 
warned that they should themselves make sure to depend on or recommend 
MTA as needed.

If the library package also includes an executable which is in the 
default $PATH, and which needs an MTA to work properly, then I believe 
that executable should be put in a separate package which can then 
depend on the library and depend on or recommend the daemon.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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