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6.9 What is meant by saying that a package Depends, Recommends, Suggests, Conflicts, Replaces or Provides another package?
The Debian package system has a range of package "dependencies" which
are designed to indicate (in a single flag) the level at which Program A can
operate independently of the existence of Program B on a given system:
-
Package A depends on Package B if B absolutely must be installed in
order to run A. In some cases, A depends not only on B, but on a version of B.
In this case, the version dependency is usually a lower limit, in the sense
that A depends on any version of B more recent than some specified version.
-
Package A recommends Package B, if the package maintainer judges that
most users would not want A without also having the functionality provided by
B.
-
Package A suggests Package B if B contains files that are related to
(and usually enhance) the functionality of A.
-
Package A conflicts with Package B when A will not operate if B is
installed on the system. Most often, conflicts are cases where A contains
files which are an improvement over those in B. "Conflicts" are
often combined with "replaces".
-
Package A replaces Package B when files installed by B are removed and
(in some cases) over-written by files in A.
-
Package A provides Package B when all of the files and functionality
of B are incorporated into A. This mechanism provides a way for users with
constrained disk space to get only that part of package A which they really
need.
More detailed information on the use of each these terms can be found in the
Policy manual.
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