Bug#714320: recommended / suggested

[Pierre Colombier]

Hi Hilko,

The problem is that we are all expecting this distro to have reasonable 
"recommends" that do not include everything but just what seems to 
always be desireable.

in my not-so-humble opinion, nmap is essentially a console tool used for 
security and diagnostic purposes and I think it should keep a 
minimalistic approch. It's ok to suggest all theses things but It has no 
sense to recommend them. At least, it has no sense on a machine that 
doesn't already have a GUI.

The fact that this problem has been lasting for years, is not a good 
reason to let it subsist.
It is never a good thing to add unnecessary software on a system, even 
if the disk space is out of concern.

As I already said last year, adding the --no-install-recommends option 
*works* but it is not ok, it's just a
workaround. and it's also a bad choice to globally reconfigure apt just 
for one package that has poor recommandations.

I suggest the package to be split in something like "nmap-tiny" wich 
should not include the current Install-Recommends and an "nmap-full" 
that would behave like the current package.
compatibility could be preserved by adding a metapackage "nmap" that  
depends on "nmap-tiny" and recommends "nmap-full"

Cheers,
Pierre


On Thu, 09 Feb 2017 21:26:42 +0100 Hilko Bengen <bengen at debian.org> wrote:

 > Does the problem on your asmall routers not go away when you configure
 > APT by putting
 >
 > APT::Install-Recommends "false";
 >