On 11/28/2015 12:55 PM, MI wrote:
I'm setting up a new server, and wanted to install "meld", a nice
"graphical tool to diff and merge files".
Surprised by the huge amount of dependencies it was about to install,
I had a closer look. And indeed, the dependencies seem ridiculous:
spell-checkers, multimedia codecs, a modem manager, wifi, etc. Below
is the full list, with the short descriptions, and "??" in front of
those which seemed obviously unneeded. I'm sure there are even more
unneeded ones, which I didn't mark because I'm not sure what they are
for.
It looks like the meld package wants to install a full desktop with
all the bells and whistles on my headless server.
So the question is: what is the best way to install meld without all
the cruft?
- with dpkg --force-depends -i ?
Even if you manage to make the application run, the package will be
permanently in a broken state, and for every other future operation
you'll need to tell apt/dpkg to ignore the broken dependencies.
You could create dummy packages to fulfill those dependencies, but then
if you install a package that really needs one of those libraries, that
package won't work, and it might take a while for you to find out why.
- by installing from the repository of an older distribution? How?
This might work, but one day it will stop working.
- compile the source? (but will also have dependencies, harder to
track down?)
If it's some optional feature of the program that can be turned off,
then yes, that might decrease the number of packages. But otherwise, the
same problems are likely to arise.
What would you do?
It could be that some dependencies are actually recommends. Try with
apt-get --no-install-recommends.
If you use aptitude's interactive mode, you can see why each package is
pulled (which other package requires or recommends it), and you can work
up the chain.