On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 8:05 AM, Stephen Gallagher <sgallagh@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > (Please keep the conversation on the devel list; I'm CCing it the rel > -eng list to make sure all the relevant people see the initial message) > > This past week, the Fedora Packaging Committee approved the use of > "weak dependencies" in Fedora. What this means is that RPM packages can > now have three levels of dependency-resolution: Requires, Recommends > and Suggests. > * Requires: the requested package cannot function without this > additional package installed > * Recommends: the requested package can function in some minimal > capacity without this additional package installed, but the majority of > installations will want it for full productivity. These are usually > core plugins for the primary package. DNF defaults to installing > Recommends: dependencies automatically. > * Suggests: the requested package can easily function without this > additional package. This module may provide some less-common > functionality that a user might want. DNF defaults to *not* installing > Suggests: packages automatically. > > Traditionally, we have only supported "Requires" dependencies and thus > the creation of install media (Live and otherwise) has been relatively > straightforward: we create a kickstart file that is fed into the > compose process containing a list of packages and groups that we want > installed onto the target system and the compose process automatically > pulls in all of the dependencies. However, with the advent of weak > dependencies, we have new questions that need answering about how this > compose process should work. (We also need to investigate what exactly > happens with the tools we have today - some of which still use yum, not > DNF - when weak dependencies are added to the mix). > > From my perspective, there are three ways that we could choose to go: > > 1) Follow the default DNF behavior: Requires: and Recommends: packages > are included on the install media (and therefore also installed > together onto the target system) > > 2) Include *all* dependencies - Requires, Recommends and Suggests - on > the install media. The installer would still follow DNF defaults, so > the target system would get only the Requires and Recommends packages > unless the Suggests: packages are explicitly selected (which will also > require the creation of additional comps.xml changes to include the > Suggests packages) > > 3) Include only Requires: dependencies by default and require spin > -kickstarts owners to explicitly add any Recommends or Suggests > packages that they also want to include. Packages added explicitly will > be installed as described in 2) (requiring additional comps.xml changes > to include Suggests stuff) You didn't offer your opinion on which of the three options you think we should go with. I would offer option 1 is the one we'd pick. It honors the intentions of the package maintainer the best. Which would you choose? josh -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
