Bug#941803: debian-policy: dependencies on font packages

[Stephen Kitt <skitt@debian.org>]

Package: debian-policy
Version: 4.4.1.1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

Policy section 11.8.5, point 1 says

> If one or more of the fonts so packaged are necessary for proper
> operation of the package with which they are associated the font
> package may be Recommended; if the fonts merely provide an
> enhancement, a Suggests relationship may be used. Packages must not
> Depend on font packages.

The associated footnote explains that

> This is because the X server may retrieve fonts from the local file
> system or over the network from an X font server; the Debian package
> system is empowered to deal only with the local file system.

While this is still technically true, it seems rather irrelevant
nowadays: most GUI programs directly render fonts obtained locally,
and even for “traditional” X fonts, the vast majority of systems will
obtain the fonts locally. Debian hasn’t had xfs for 5.5 years
(<https://bugs.debian.org/bug=733958>); there is another font server
available, xfstt, but that only handles TrueType fonts.

It’s common for packages to strongly depend on non-X fonts they need;
see for example the reverse dependencies of fonts-dejavu. While
lintian objects to X font depencencies
(<https://lintian.debian.org/tags/package-depends-on-an-x-font-package.html>),
it doesn’t have anything to say about non-X fonts (rightly so).

Wouldn’t it make sense to relax the constraints on X font
dependencies?

Regards,

Stephen


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 10.1
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-debug'), (500, 'stable'), (100, 'unstable-debug'), (100, 'testing-debug'), (100, 'unstable'), (100, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental-debug'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-6-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

debian-policy depends on no packages.

Versions of packages debian-policy recommends:
ii  libjs-sphinxdoc  1.8.4-1

Versions of packages debian-policy suggests:
ii  doc-base  0.10.8

-- no debconf information