Marvin Renich <mrvn@renich.org> writes:
> I certainly agree with you that 99.9% is clearly a wrong number for
> this. However I disagree that even 0.1% justifies using a different
> definition for Recommends than policy gives.
libgpgme11 is not doing that. The library is literally unusable for its
actual technical purpose without gnupg installed, which clearly meets the
definition of Depends in Debian Policy:
The Depends field should be used if the depended-on package is
required for the depending package to provide a significant amount of
functionality.
There is absolutely no question that gnupg is required for libgpgme11 to
provide a significant amount of functionality, given that the library can
do essentially nothing other than generate error messages if gnupg is not
installed.
Now, there is *also* an interesting argument in this thread that we should
consider the usability of programs linked against a shared library for
optional features sufficiently strongly to warrant demoting dependencies
of shared libraries to Recommends. There is some support for this given
the special nature of shared libraries and the interaction between their
dependencies and the Debian practice of linking with shared libraries for
all optional features. We can have (and are having) a debate over whether
we should *amend* the rule about dependencies to single out shared
libraries for special treatment due to that property.
But I think it's simply incorrect to say that libgpgme11 is in any way
doing something wrong given what Policy says right now. This *clearly*
meets the definition of Depends as currently stated in Policy.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>