Bug#493948: gnome should depend on swfdec-gnome, not swfdec-mozilla

[Margarita Manterola]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 5:29 AM, Josselin Mouette <joss at debian.org> wrote:

>> > A recommend would mean swfdec-mozilla would not be installed by default
>> > since tasksel does not honor recommends.
>> Why not fix tasksel ? ;-)
> This may be done post-lenny, but it has strong implications on the size
> of the default install.

Alright, I understand the problem.  However, using a "depends" when
it's not really something that is depended on (all browsers can
perfectly work without a flash player) breaks the definition of the
Depends field.

By having it depend instead of just recommend, it is currently being
forced that the user installs swfdec when installing gnome.  And then,
if the user would rather use other flash player, currently they need
to uninstall swfdec so that iceweasel uses the other player [1], thus
having to uninstall gnome and getting a whole lot of packages into
"auto-remove" state.

Maybe we need a way to tell tasksel which "Recommends" it should
install and which not.  But forcing the user to install packages that
don't work well and need to be removed in order to be replaced by
something that works, is not a good idea.  In general, forcing a
"Depends" when we actually mean "Recommends" is not a good idea.

[1]: this was fixed for gnash in swfdec-mozilla/0.6.0-3, but it's not
fixed (and I think it can't be fixed) for the closed flash plugin, and
we know that lots of flash pages don't work with neither swf nor
gnash.

-- 
Besos,
Marga