[Debian-hebrew-common] Why is myspell-he extra?

[Baruch Even]

* Shachar Shemesh <shachar at shemesh.biz> [061030 18:54]:
> http://qa.debian.org/debcheck.php?dist=testing&package=user-he
> 
> User-he is an "optional" package, but it depends on myspell-he, which is
> marked "extra". This breaks all sorts of rules.
> 
> After looking at various other user-* packages, it seems that the norm
> is to only suggest other packages, and not depend on much at all. I
> don't think I like that much for our case, as "suggest" does not
> install, by default, when doing "apt-get install", but I would suggest
> the following:
> Depends - only on "locales".
> Demote all existing "recommends" to "suggests", and all existing
> "depends" to "recommends".
> 
> Some specific changes:
> kde-i18n-he - We cannot have it as a "depends", or we are, in essence,
> forcing Hebrew users to install KDE. I would also move it into the
> "suggests".
> koffice-i18n-he, openoffice-l10n-he - same stuff

Originally we wanted everything to be as simple as possible for the
Hebrew users. No one is forcing anyone to install user-he so the
dependencies are not critical. But I do think that you are right and
that the package needs to follow Debian policy better.

FWIW, the suggest keywords is only useful in dselect, apt-get completely
ignores it and even for recommends it will not add it to the list but
rather show it to you and you have the option to stop and add the extra
packages to the command line. Though I guess most novice users will be
using synaptics and the apt-get issue is less important.

One thing that was useful in the current setup was that we could simply
tell folks to install user-he and they were assured to get a fully
functioning system though it can have parts that they are not interested
in.

> In effect, I would suggest moving all dependencies that mean installing
> a big subsystem info "suggest". Small programs (such as fonts, hdate
> etc.) should be "Recommends". I cannot think of any program that a
> Hebrew user MUST have, and so our "Depends" should be almost empty.

I prefer to make sure that the user has the culmus fonts and Depend on
it, this is the most important part for a functioning Hebrew system.

Beyond that things should go to Recommends. I'm not too sure about
making OOo and KDE Suggests. But I don't know how synaptic handles
suggest.

> Now, I know of one possible reply you may state. It is "you have both
> commit access and upload permissions - just do it". I will, gladly, but
> I wanted to discuss it first because:
> - I don't want to butt in on anyone. I was accepted for my bidiui work
> - I think these changes require discussion first.

Small and obvious changes should just be done, the whole point of team
maintainership is to be able to cover for others when someone is too
busy or unavailable for whatever reason. Waiting with discussions is
less efficient.

Large and non-obvious changes are to be discussed, and this topic is a
good example for something that should be discussed.

Since this is team maintainership I see no ownership of parts of it. I
have no ownership of any package even those I started to package. Feel
free to touch any of "my" packages.

> (adding myself to the "Uploaders" list while doing so).

Feel free to add yourself to the uploaders in the repository, and it
will be updated in the next upload of the package. Obviously, there is
no point to upload a package just for the sake of chaning the uploaders
field.

Cheers,
Baruch