[Rpm-metadata] Debian metadata (was Re: format misc)

[Jeff Licquia]

On Wed, 2003-10-08 at 19:10, Jeff Johnson wrote:

> Perhaps Suggests: and Recommends: might become synonyms too?

I don't expect they will; they have two different meanings.

You can think of Depends, Recommends, and Suggests as three levels of
dependency, each weaker than the previous.  "Depends" means "unusable
without".  "Recommends" means "technically, you can get along without
it, but you probably don't want to".  "Suggests" means "nice, but not
that important".

And now we have "Enhances" which is a reverse "Suggests".  "Package A
Enhances package B" is the same as "B Suggests A".

> Catch me on rpm-devel at colug.net (not yet public, announce in a week or two),
> where you will find me attempting a unified package manager project
> for linux. Wish me luck!

Interesting.  I do wish you luck; I imagine you'll need it. :-)

I'm not sure I have the luxury of another mailing list, though; all
those important Microsoft security updates are taking up all my time.
:-)

> So, I'm very happy to see Debian involvement.

Good. :-)