Recommended dependencies (or rather suggested dependencies as they are actually called) are already a feature of slapt-get/gslapt. They have always been. And there are many packages that are making use of that feature. For example all the gstreamer packages, like this one:
Code: Select all
# slapt-get --show gst-plugins-good
Package Name: gst-plugins-good
Package Mirror: http://salix.enialis.net/x86_64/14.0/
Package Priority: Preferred
Package Location: ./salix/l
Package Version: 0.10.31-x86_64-1gv
Package Size: 1017 K
Package Installed Size: 4068 K
Package Required: gstreamer,gst-plugins-base
Package Conflicts:
Package Suggests: aalib,alsa-lib,audiofile,esound,flac,libavc1394,libcaca,libdrm,libdv,libiec61883,libogg,libraw1394,libshout,libsoup,libtheora,libvorbis,slang,slang1,speex,sqlite,taglib,v4l-utils,wavpack
Package MD5 Sum: 63918c529d0aff90c0b35ab53008d6a9
Package Description:
gst-plugins-good (a set of good-quality plug-ins under LGPL)
GStreamer Good Plug-ins is a set of plug-ins that we consider to have
good quality code, correct functionality, our preferred license (LGPL
for the plug-in code, LGPL or LGPL-compatible for the supporting
library).
Package ChangeLog:
Added. Overriding the Slackware package. This one includes several additional plugins: 1394, dv, gconfelements, shout2, souphttpsrc and speex.
Package Installed: yes
It's the responsibility of the packager to determine if any of the dependencies are actually optional. If they are, they should be put in a .sug file, instead of in the .dep file. I have no idea about vlc, because I never use it. The packager has determined that samba is a dependency, but if it can work without samba, then samba should be a suggestion instead of a dependency. I don't know if it can, I haven't tried it.