I'm quite tempted by svuorela's suggestion on IRC today.

Create a meta package e.g. mbarcode-all-plugins. Add all extant plugins to this meta-package. Have each plugin provide mbarcode-plugin as well as mbarcode-plugin-NAME.

Have the mbarcode package depend on "mbarcode-all-plugins | mbarcode-plugin".

I know the deps are the wrong way around, but no-one can use a plugin on its own so no worries there, and this will mean that all the plugins are installed to begin with, and all but one can be removed without any dpkg problems.

Thoughts?

P.S. We should also get the plugin enable/disable dialog working so uninstalling plugins isn't so necessary.