I have kind-of read this thread but have not digested it all.

I had a few simple comments and questions.

With regard to SM and dependencies, etc. I am hoping that it is much, 
much, much smarter than Debian. :)

I have absolutely no knowledge of how much extraneous and superfluous 
cruft Debian installed on my computer as pre-requisites for something I 
dselected.

I could do something so simple as try out an email client which used 
MySQL for its storage. For sake of discussion, the email client wrote 
its own or used some c-libs to connect with MySQL. Would dselect simply 
and only get the email client and MySQL? No, unfortunately no!

It would find every stinking optional works with MySQL package in the 
6000+ package Debian system. I would get Perl, Python, Ruby, Scheme, ... 
and on and on libraries for MySQL. Ugh and yuck.

This causes/caused a maintainence nightmare. Now I am constantly 
downloading, updating, and configuring software I didn't select, want, 
desire or need.

For me Gentoo has been much better in this regard.

It would be nice if we could have an understanding of:
   Requires - pre-requisites which are non-negotiable.
   Desires - possibly pre-requisites which can make things nicer.
   Options - optional software which works either with the selected 
package or one of the Required/Desired pre-requisite packages.

Possibly could be a setting which set Desires to:
   "Yes, always give me the Desires packages"
   "No, never give me the Desires packages"  (I run a minimal system)
   "Prompt me and let me select from the Desires packages."

Options should have the "No..." and "Prompt..." settings available.

Just a mild rant and some hopefully productive thoughts. :)

Jimmie Houchin