Meta Packages - Developers point of view

A meta package is a Debian package which contains:

Dependencies from other Debian packages
Depend from packages to do a certain task
Recommend further interesting packages
Suggest others or non-free packages
User menu entries (recommended)
in /etc/cdd/<cdd>/menu/<pkg-name>
maintained via role based tools
Configuration (optional)
debconf questions or pre-seeding
cfengine scripts (optional)
Special meta package: <cdd>-common