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

[Lior Kaplan]

Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> 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.

>From a changelog I have regarding hspell source package (un committed yet):

hspell (1.0-3) UNRELEASED; urgency=low

  * Change priority of myspell-he to optional according to the "Debian
Spelling
    Dictionaries and Tools Policy": "myspell dictionary packages are
    "Architecture: all" and have priority "optional".

This should also fix the user-he package priorities problems you
mentioned about. A mail to FTP-masters was already sent a few times in
the past with no response.

> 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
> 
> As a side note, i18n is the wrong name. They should both have used
> "l10n" instead, but that's beside the point.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.

Baruch and I already talked about this in the past, and the desicion was
to leave the package as is. The reason for this is that:

1. It is for newbies, which should do a minimal steps possible for
having Hebrew support. We don't want them to know anything about package
dependencies types.
2. We don't want to work with too many meta packages (user-he-base,
user-he-gnome, user-he-kde ...).
3. aptitude treat recommends as depends since it installs the recommends
packages by default, so we take advantage of that when possible.

> Having said that, if I don't hear from any of you in three days, I'll go
> ahead and make the changes and upload them (adding myself to the
> "Uploaders" list while doing so).

Please change this to a week in the future. Not all people are available
for posting all the time.

Although I appreciate you enthusiasm (:

-- 

Lior Kaplan
kaplan at debian.org

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