a 1.4 MB package recommended 230 MB of packages :|

[Lisi]

On Sunday 11 April 2010 22:58:06 Tom H wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Lisi <lisi.reisz at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sunday 11 April 2010 20:45:16 Tom H wrote:
> >> Both Debian and Ubuntu and both apt-get and aptitude default to
> >> installing "recommends" unless you override it temporarily at the
> >> command or permanently (unless you override the override at the
> >> command) in /etc/apt/apt.conf or /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/<file>.
> >
> > I am running Lenny.  aptitude definitely _doesn't_ default to installing
> > recommends. I don't know about Squeeze and Sid; but Lenny is Debian, so
> > the generalisation is clearly not always true.
>
> The "APT" settings apply to both apt-get and aptitude. This is from
> the Debian apt changelog (Lenny's latest version of apt is
> 0.7.20.2+lenny1):
>
> apt 0.7.17:
>      - APT::Install-Recommends is now true by default, mentioned this in
>        configure-index example. (Closes: #463268)
>
> Furthermore, this is from the aptitude changelog:
>
> aptitude 0.4.11-1
>      - Migrate the setting for enabling installation of Recommends from
>        Aptitude::Recommends-Important to Apt::Install-Recommends.
>        (Closes: #458189, #448561)
>
> The above change was prompted by:
>
> "I use Git to share my key dotfiles, including .aptitude/config, among
> various machines.  These machines run various combinations of stable,
> testing, and unstable.  Recently, aptitude started transitioning my
> ~/.aptitude/config from Aptitude::Recommends-Important to
> APT::Install-Recommends, and blanking out the former.  While I
> appreciate aptitude upgrading my configuration automatically, the
> blanking of Aptitude::Recommends-Important makes my .aptitude/config
> no longer disable installation of Recommends on systems running older
> versions of aptitude.  Thus, I need some way to tell aptitude to stop
> changing Aptitude::Recommends-Important in my configuration, or better
> yet to let it continue to reflect my choice for "Install recommended
> packages automatically" provided through the aptitude preferences UI."

My default install of Lenny does _not_ install recommends.  Neither in this 
incarnation, a fresh netinstall 10 days ago because of a dead HDD, nor its 
predecessor on the old HDD.  

As I say, this is a default installation.

A possible explanation is that an apt config file, of which I am unaware, is 
in /home, which I retained (it was on a separate disk) and is from an earlier 
installation, but I have altered nothing, neither before nor now.

Lisi