Re: Too many Recommends (in particular on mail-transport-agent)
On Tue, Jun 06, 2017 at 03:55:48PM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 05, 2017 at 05:39:41PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > Maybe someone has a list of things they view as Recommends inflation that
> > have (a) been reported as bugs to the appropriate package maintainers, and
> > (b) have been rejected by those package maintainers? Those are the
> > controversial ones that we'd need to talk about.
>
> Here's something even better: an automated way to list bad Recommends that
> personally affect you -- ones that made you take steps to ignore them when
> installing a package you actually use:
>
> ..--==[ list-unsatisfied-recommends ]
> #!/usr/bin/python
> import apt
> c = apt.Cache()
> for pkg in c:
> if pkg.installed is not None:
> for rd in pkg.candidate.get_dependencies("Recommends"):
> if not rd.installed_target_versions:
> print pkg, rd
> `----
>
> Forgot whom to credit for this tool; alas, it's written in a language that
> itself is bloat[1].
>
> More seriously, though, let's go through the list of 94 unsatisfied ones on
> my desktop; the list below is transposed to collate recommendees.
>
>
> Categories:
> OK: "Recommends:" looks warranted
> DEBATABLE: duh.
> BLOAT: potentially useful but I wouldn't make it a Recommends
> BAD: downgrade please
> TRANSITIVELY BAD: useful for a direct user but not when pulled via a
> dependency -or- causes this lower in the chain
>
> <ton of Java crap>: libreoffice-base
> * BLOAT: they're no longer owned by Sun, what's the reason to keep Java
> scripting?
Actually, there's significant functionality for some part of
libreoffice-base (this is not the "core" of libreoffice, but the
database component) that's implemented in Java. You can still use
libreoffice-base without java, but that functionality won't be available
then.
I think that's a perfect match for "all but unusual" here.
> dnsmasq-base: lxc
> * BAD: how often are you on a network without a DNS server?
This is about lxc being able to resolve the other containers and the
host system, not about other machines on the network.
You may not be interested in that, but it seems as a perfectly
reasonable thing for a recommends to me.
[...]
> fonts-cantarell: fontforge-common
> * BAD: FontForge works perfectly without it
Yes, but isn't there missing functionality then? If so, that makes
perfect sense.
> fonts-noto-cjk: fonts-noto
> * BLOAT: unlike greek/runes/etc, you can't learn Chinese hieroglyphs on a
> whim, thus it's useless for most users. You may want a _single_ CJK font
> so you can tell whether a text is in C, J or K but that's it.
I think this is something that can only reasonably be decided by someone
who actually speaks the languages in question.
> freedoom | game-data-packager: prboom-plus
> * DEBATABLE: freedoom is too ugly to live, shareware Doom has assets missing
> for running pretty much anything Doom-related (and AFAIK its license
> forbids add-ons). On the other hand, this is an excuse for Doom engines
> in main.
freedoom is quite fun, actually, IMHO. I think this should be a Depends
rather than a Recommends, but perhaps there's a way to use a doom engine
without wads? Dunno.
[...]
> ghostscript: gimp imagemagick-6.q16 libmagickcore-6.q16-3 netpbm
> * BAD: why would editing images care about a grossly obsolete _document_
> format?
PostScript is often used to store images, too. All these tools use
ghostscript as an import filter for opening those files.
It makes perfect sense to me?
[...]
> gnupg-l10n: gnupg
> * DEBATABLE: I don't think anyone tech skilled enough to use GPG would have
> problems with English, but localization is important. On the other hand,
> this is 4.5MB in the default install.
No. Just, no. i18n is not a "feature" that we should disable by default.
It should be on by default. Users should not have to check every time
they use a program whether there's i18n files.
There is no stronger example than this to show the "all but unusual"
argument, IMO.
[...]
> libaacs0: libbluray1
> * BLOAT: useful only if you rip optical media
Yes, but essential if you do.
> libclass-xsaccessor-perl: libmoo-perl
> * BLOAT: wut?
They make things go much faster ("The XS accessor methods were between
1.6 and 2.5 times faster than typical pure-perl accessors in some simple
benchmarking.", the description says). However, since it's written in C,
it's not guaranteed to work everywhere. If they're not available or
buggy on your architecture, you might still want to be able to say "use
Moo;" without running into issues, but the normal way of using
libmoo-perl is to have libclass-xsaccessor-perl installed, too.
How is that in any way "bloat"?
> libgit-wrapper-perl: devscripts
> * ????: I've never used git-deborig, is it actually useful? Tiny package,
> though.
devscripts has an "interesting" way to categorize recommends and
depends. Some of them are debateable, but they are internally
consistent.
> libgnomeui-0: xscreensaver
> * BAD: Gnome users won't run xscreensaver
Actually, gnome-screensaver has the ability to run xscreensaver hacks.
> libgpm2: libncurses5:i386
> * OK: or rather, not doable with current tools: we do want mouse support
> in curses programs (libgpm2 handles X terminals too, right?) but in this
> case it's a multiarch copy of an otherwise important package
Read up on multiarch, then. Depends/recommends/suggests can only be
satisfied by packages from their own architecture.
[...]
> libgtk2-perl: tablet-encode
> * out of archive
libgtk2-perl:
Geïnstalleerd: 2:1.2499-1
Kandidaat: 2:1.2499-1
Versietabel:
*** 2:1.2499-1 500
500 http://ftp.be.debian.org/debian sid/main amd64 Packages
500 http://ftp.be.debian.org/debian testing/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
Nope.
> libhtml-format-perl: libhtml-tree-perl libwww-perl
> * ????: wut?
libwww-perl has the ability to parse HTML forms, so that you can do
something like "download a form, get the unique nonce from the form, add
username and password, continue".
Whether that's worth a dependency is debateable.
> libhttp-daemon-perl: libwww-perl
> * TRANSITIVELY BAD: dependency comes from a client package; if I want to run
> a http server I know where to find it
>
> libimage-magick-perl: inkscape
> * ????: wut?
Inkscape can import raster images to use in the vector images. Almost
any vector image will want to do that at some point, and for many of
those files you'll need to use an import filter.
How is that anything but "all but unusual"?
[...]
> libmail-sendmail-perl: po-debconf
> * BAD: why would po stuff want to send mail?
po-debconf has a tool to automatically email translators with
out-of-date translations to request an updated tranlation. It's called
"podebconf-report-po" and is extremely helpful! You should use it! And
yes, it requires to send out email.
Perfectly within the "all but unusual" description, IMO.
> libpackage-stash-xs-perl: libpackage-stash-perl
> * TRANSITIVELY BAD: dependencies pulling more dependencies, why?
As with other "xs vs no xs" options in perl, "makes things go faster",
but there's still basic functionality when the dependency is absent.
> libpam-cap: libcap2-bin
> * ????: no idea.
Read up on capabilities, what they're useful for, and why you would want
to use them.
Suddenly you'll understand why you might want to assign some of them at
login time.
[...]
> libpam-systemd: xfce4-power-manager xfce4-session
> * BAD: Depends:systemd, utterly pointless without it.
I believe this was because libpam-systemd uses libsystemd-shared, which
is found in the systemd binary package.
However, installing the systemd binary package does in no way require
that systemd is used as pid1.
[...]
> libpurple-bin: libpurple0
> * BAD: a library has no reason to install programs
Except if those are things that the library might want to system().
Like, say,
/usr/bin/purple-url-handler
... which is found in libpurple-bin.
[...]
> libsoap-lite-perl: devscripts
> * ????: apparently some obscure option of dch, I don't know.
probably used by the "bts" script to query (you guessed it) the bts.
[...]
> libunicode-utf8-perl: libpath-tiny-perl
> * ????: isn't Perl's built-in UTF-8 decoding good enough?
The description says:
Performs between 600% and 1200% faster than Encode.
so apparently not.
[...]
> pavucontrol: xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin
> * BAD: PulseAudio means no working sound, until you fix it, sorry no.
So why do you have xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin installed, then?
[... bored now ...]
it feels to me like you've just looked at the package names and gone
"meh, wtf, don't need that". While that may seem "obviously correct" to
you, a short amount of investigation into most of those things you think
need to be thrown out (I haven't given any of those packages more than a
minute each) shows that there usually *are* good reasons to add a
Recommends.
Yes, sometimes there are too many of them; but no, that does not (and
should not) mean that we're Doing It Wrong(TM). It just means that
occasionally, you might want to file a bug, rather than rant on -devel
;-)
--
Help me, off-by-one kenobi. You're my only nought.
Reply to: