Bug#757305: cyrus-common: should not recommend mail servers

[Ondřej Surý]

Control: tags -1 +wontfix

Hi Brian,

On Thu, Aug 7, 2014, at 04:10, brian m. carlson wrote:
> Package: cyrus-common
> Version: 2.4.17+caldav~beta10-1
> Severity: minor
> 
> cyrus-common Recommends cyrus-imapd | cyrus-pop3d | cyrus-murder |
> cyrus-nntpd | cyrus-admin | cyrus-caldav.  Policy §7.2 says:
> 
>   The `Recommends' field should list packages that would be found
>   together with this one in all but unusual installations.
> 
> I've used the Cyrus clients for testing for several years on numerous
> systems.  I'm not at all interested in using Cyrus for mail.  I suspect
> I'm *not in the minority* here, and this dependency means that anyone with
> the clients installed will automatically have cyrus-imapd installed
> unless they explicitly deselect it.  Considering *many people* use the
> clients on a laptop or desktop, where an IMAP server is not wanted, this
> dependency should probably be downgraded to a Suggests.

I am sorry, but those are very bold claims without evidence.

> I particularly don't think having only the clients installed is an
> "unusual installation".

The cyrus-clients package contains only the *test binaries, thus
I do consider it the "unusual installation".  Also popcon doesn't
support your theory very much - cyrus-imapd-2.4 installations
almost match the cyrus-common-2.4 installations.

And I am pretty sure that if you know what the cyrus-clients are good
for that you can either use: "--no-install-recommends" or deinstall
cyrus-imapd afterwards.

O.
-- 
Ondřej Surý <ondrej at sury.org>
Knot DNS (https://www.knot-dns.cz/) – a high-performance DNS server