[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#807784: Bug#807784: octave-optim suggests `lyx`

[Rafael Laboissiere]

Control: severity -1 normal

* Hormet Yiltiz <hyiltiz at gmail.com> [2015-12-12 19:29]:

> Package: octave-optim
> Version: 1.4.1-1+b1
> Severity: serious
> Justification: Policy 7.2
>
>   octave-optim suggests lyx, which is a office suite that makes working
>   with LaTeX easy, and implements a way for reproducable research.
>   However, `lyx` then depends on `texlive`, which is a heavy
>   dependency. Octave-optim is a package of GNU Octave, which is used
>   for scientific computation. octave-optim, being a package for a
>   octave that does the computation, should NOT depend or suggest a 3rd
>   party software that is not very related to its usage.

I disagree with this interpretation.  Section 7.2 of the Policy manual 
does mandate that:

"Depends […] The Depends field should be used if the depended-on package 
is required for the depending package to provide a significant amount of 
functionality. […]"

However, there is no such requirement for the Suggests relationship:

"Suggests: This is used to declare that one package may be more useful 
with one or more others. Using this field tells the packaging system and 
the user that the listed packages are related to this one and can perhaps 
enhance its usefulness, but that installing this one without them is 
perfectly reasonable."

I am therefore downgrading the severity of this bug report to "normal" 
hereby.

That said, I agree with the bug submitter that having to install lyx, 
which pulls the whole TeX distribution, is an overkill for just reading 
part of the documentation.  I am now working on a solution that will ship 
the *.pdf instead of the *.lyx, as it is currently the case.  This will 
eventually fix the bug reported here.

Rafael