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List:       debian-user
Subject:    Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?
From:       Andy Smith <andy () strugglers ! net>
Date:       2023-06-02 8:05:18
Message-ID: ZHmivuFs+YdHLWbn () bitfolk ! com
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Hello,

On Fri, Jun 02, 2023 at 09:49:39AM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> FWIW, I do install with no-recommends in general:
> 
>   tomas@trotzki:~$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/95no-recommends 
>   APT::Install-Recommends no;
> 
> "Not supported" seemed a bit strong to me: what does mean "not
> supported" in a non-commercial distro, anyway?

It is a philosophical question but I think that with every package
there is a social contract regarding what behaviour can be expected
from the package.

The packages are put together with an expected set of recommends.

If you do not install all of those recommends then you can obviously
expect some features of the package to not be present. If the
upstream project has done things well, error messages will be very
clear when you try to use a feature that is missing a dependency.

However, in the real world you will sometimes experience confusing
behaviour where it's not clear if that is expected or what — if
anything — is missing. At best, improving that once identified is
going to be a minor or wish list bug priority and it's work that the
Debian maintainer can't really be expected to investigate or carry
patches for. They already set the recommends.

So, when I say "not supported", I mean that I think it is beyond
expectations that the package should still work exactly as
documented if you do not install recommends, and should only be done
by experienced users who are prepared to rule out missing recommends
any time they see strange behaviour.

> I'd prefer to say: not recommended for newbies.

Agreed.

> you'll have to be prepared to look into package descriptions and
> come up yourself with "oh, perhaps I want to install that, too".
> 
> It's not hard. 

Most of the time with most packages it's obvious, but I have seen
some weird things from time to time! KVM is such a big package that
I shy away from just advising --no-install-recommends to those
inexperienced with it.

Thanks,
Andy

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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