Re: Policy for adding DEPENDS

[Taylor R Campbell <campbell+netbsd-tech-pkg%mumble.net@localhost>]

> Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2017 16:43:11 +0200
> From: Edgar Fuß <ef%math.uni-bonn.de@localhost>
> 
> What's the policy for adding a DEPENDS to a package?
> 
> I spent the better half of yesterday's working day tracking down why I 
> couldn't print plain text files with CUPS 2.1 (print/cups) and the filters 
> (print/cups-filters). It turned out to be a missing font and I ended up 
> looking up the corresponding Debian packages Depends: lines to find I 
> needed to install fonts/freefont-ttf.
> 
> I was about to file a PR about a missing DEPENDS in print/cups-filters, 
> but one could argue you can install a different font package, print all 
> sorts of other formats just fine without the font or only need cups-browsed 
> (included in the same package) and not care about working filters at all.

Maybe we should adopt RECOMMENDS or SUGGESTS variants of DEPENDS like
Debian has:

- DEPENDS is mandatory and always installed.
- RECOMMENDS is optional, but by default installed.
- SUGGESTS is optional, and by default not installed.