Thijs Kinkhorst
2006-07-25 08:55:08 UTC
I recently stumbled upon a bug (#379561) in wordpress. Wordpress depends
on a mysql-server installed in order to run, but the Debian package
wordpress does not.
I filled a bugreport and the answer was that some users might want to
connect wordpress to a remote mysql-server so the local mysql-server is
not really needed. Although I really doubt that this is the standard
use-case for the vast majority of our users and we should support this
by default, I understand the problem.
Even if a majority of our users will install the packages together, weon a mysql-server installed in order to run, but the Debian package
wordpress does not.
I filled a bugreport and the answer was that some users might want to
connect wordpress to a remote mysql-server so the local mysql-server is
not really needed. Although I really doubt that this is the standard
use-case for the vast majority of our users and we should support this
by default, I understand the problem.
will design the depends of a package to make sure the minimum, not
average conditions, are met. Otherwise the people who do not want
mysql-server on the same host (which is quite heavy) aren't even able to
do so cleanly.
Luckily we have other mechanisms to do what you request, Recommends and
Suggests. Most packages I've seen that might use a MySQL-server,
'suggest' it. That seems sensible to me since it's not quite exceptional
to have the MySQL server on a remote host.
The wordpress package also does this. I recommend to have this practice
included in the database-applications best practices, located here:
http://people.debian.org/~seanius/policy/dbapp-policy.html/ I've CC'ed
the debian-webapps list to that extent.
Thijs