a 1.4 MB package recommended 230 MB of packages :|

[Tom H]

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 3:33 AM, Lisi <lisi.reisz at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

This explanation makes sense because a preference in your home
directory would override elsewhere; so your install is not a default
one ;)

The "Configuration file reference" page of the aptitude manual
http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/ch02s04s05.html
has
Option: Apt::Install-Recommends
Default: true
as the first configuration option.