Package: tinysshd
Version: 20180201-1
[Jan Mojžíš: this is a reply to a thread on debian-devel; some of the
statements below are directed toward that thread, not to you
personally.]
* Vincent Bernat <
bernat@debian.org> [181021 11:29]:
❦ 21 octobre 2018 13:15 GMT, Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.net>:
tinysshd only ships a systemd unit file; neomutt links against
libgpgme11 which again Depends on gnupg. It’s the kind of
dependencies that individually make sense,
I beg to differ; I suppose (though haven’t actually tried) I
can start tinysshd straight from rc.local just as well, or even
write my own init.d script, right? Having the dependency in
place just makes it harder to me to contribute an init.d script
for the package.
tinysshd requires some kind of socket server to run. It could run from
inetd, so if you were an actual user, I would propose you file a bug
report against the package to let the maintainer knows the dependency is
too strong for your use (and maybe propose a patch to integrate with
inetd).
As you are not, please, do not. Our resources are scarce and we already
cater for the need of many non-existent users.
Recommends, rather than Depends is correct, based on your description,
even without a patch to enable use with inetd. Anyone who is not using
systemd, either out of dislike of systemd or because they have real
requirements for no or a stripped-down init system, is able to add a
single line to inetd (or one of its successors).
However, adding Depends just because the package ships with a systemd
unit file, and no other init integration, is simply wrong.
Don't let the fact that systemd antagonists keep annoying you prevent
you from doing the right thing. openssh-server has an uncompressed size
of 922k with a long list of Depends. tinysshd has an uncompressed
size of 606k with only two Depends, libc6 and systemd. Changing systemd
to a Recommends would make tinysshd significantly more useful in some
of the use cases where its stated description "minimalistic SSH server"
already makes it the preferred ssh server.
As a general rule, please use Recommends over Depends whenever it will
not truly break the package. This is exactly what Recommends is for.
...Marvin