Subject: dpkg and dependencies

From: [email-masked]
Date: 6 Sep 1996 14:40:37 -0000

The problem with packages is that they can be used for so many
things.  Other packages should be depended on only if it's needed for
the package to serve it's basic, most mainstream functions.

Secondary activities might not work if you have a minimal
configuration.  Then again, if you have a minimal configuration you
might not care much about secondary activities.

Finally, if the person is using dselect (which should be presumed, if
the person isn't reasonably expert at unix command line stuff), then
a suggested package will present itself for installation when the
package which suggests it is selected.

Package dependencies are a rather crude mechanism, only useful for
preventing the most blatant configuration mistakes.

-- 
Raul