Re: 'synaptic' removed from buster
On Thu 11 Apr 2019 at 00:34:04 (+0200), Nazar Zhuk wrote:
> On 4/10/19 10:58 AM, David Wright wrote:
> > On Sat 06 Apr 2019 at 08:42:31 (+0100), Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> > > On Fri, Apr 05, 2019 at 09:39:23PM -0500, David Wright wrote:
>
> > > > Given a straight toss-up though, I think synaptic has to give way because
> > > > there are plenty of alternatives. I'd never heard of it until a few people
> > > > started mentioning it here, and I'd never consider using it myself on X except
> > > > as an ordinary user.
> > >
> > > The severity of the bug in synaptic (which is what has caused its autoremoval)
> > > would not be "serious" if the default desktop was not Wayland. So changing
> > > *that*, would mean synaptic could be reintroduced.
> >
> > So Debian should have its policy dictated by bugs in an unrelated
> > package. Seems an odd strategy.
>
> If a change (Wayland default) is introducing issues to a stable (in a
> generic sense) system, shouldn't the change be postponed until the
> issues are resolved? Perhaps with the help from the change proponents.
I don't think it's an issue that'll be resolved in the direction you
intend. It's the enforcement of a security model that has guided most
of us for years: not running GUI applications as root.
The normal way of circumventing this is to have a non-GUI program that
performs all the work running as root, with a connection to a GUI
client program that runs as the user/administrator.
I'm not in a position to know whether running programs like gparted is
secure enough if the network is disconnected while it is running on,
say, a live system. But for synaptic, it might be written in such a
way that you can get the resolver to run with your friendly interface
as an ordinary user, and then use apt-get, say, to install the list
of packages that synaptic has come up with. Does the latter have a
dry-run option (like -s in apt-get, demonstrated here:)?
$ apt-get -s install synaptic
NOTE: This is only a simulation!
apt-get needs root privileges for real execution.
Keep also in mind that locking is deactivated,
so don't depend on the relevance to the real current situation!
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
docbook-xml libcairo-perl libept1.5.0 libglib-perl libgtk2-perl libpango-perl libpcre2-8-0
librarian0 libvte-2.91-0 libvte-2.91-common rarian-compat sgml-data
Suggested packages:
docbook docbook-dsssl docbook-xsl docbook-defguide libfont-freetype-perl libgtk2-perl-doc
perlsgml w3-recs opensp libxml2-utils dwww apt-xapian-index software-properties-gtk
The following NEW packages will be installed:
docbook-xml libcairo-perl libept1.5.0 libglib-perl libgtk2-perl libpango-perl libpcre2-8-0
librarian0 libvte-2.91-0 libvte-2.91-common rarian-compat sgml-data synaptic
0 upgraded, 13 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Inst sgml-data (2.0.10 Debian:9.8/stable [all])
[… snipped most of the install and configure lines …]
Conf rarian-compat (0.8.1-6+b1 Debian:9.8/stable [amd64])
$
Cheers,
David.
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