Bug#860503: libxcursor1: suggest /etc/alternatives/x-cursor-theme of the standard cursors

[Drew Parsons <dparsons@debian.org>]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2017 11:05:45 +1000 Kevin Ryde <user42_kevin@yahoo.com.a
u> wrote:
> Package: libxcursor1
> Version: 1:1.1.14-1+b4
> Severity: wishlist
> 
> It'd be good to have an /etc/alternatives/x-cursor-theme choice which
is
> the standard cursor font, so that's available when other packages
give
> other themes.
> 
> I struck this when adwaita-icon-theme a while ago incorporated its
> cursor font into that package, with irritating cursor animations and
> stuff.  adwaita-icon-theme is dragged in by gtk and things.  Setting
> /etc/alternatives/x-cursor-theme to /dev/null returns to the standard
> cursors, but perhaps that's not really the right way.
> 
> I'm not sure whether an alternative would belong in libxcursor1 or
some
> other base package.  It's ultimately libxcursor1 which reads chosen
> cursors if I'm not mistaken, but maybe something else is responsible
for
> the paths.


Hi Kevin. if I understand right, you know how alternatives work and
that they're controlled by the update-alternatives utility.

We see what the normal alternatives for x-cursor-theme are with
    update-alternatives --display x-cursor-theme
and can configure your preferred alternative for x-cursor-theme with
    upd
    ate-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme

There are a handful of cursor-theme packages available, e.g. see
    apt-cache search cursor | grep theme
Some others show up as icon-themes (e.g. your adwaita-icon-theme),
    apt-cache search icon-theme

There is a "base" cursor theme package, xcursor-themes, that you could
install.  But you're asking for the core theme to be offered by a core
X package, and xcursor-themes is optional. We could set this up in the
postinst script of a X11 base package (libxcursor1 could be a
reasonable choice, otherwise xorg, xserver-xorg or xserver-xorg-core),
setting up a low priority alternative for x-cursor-theme pointing to
/dev/null.

But I think the proper solution is to install xcursor-themes, which
does offer /etc/X11/cursors/core.theme as an alternative. It contains
simply
    [Icon Theme]
    Inherits=core
which is what you want to get the core cursor icons.

So rather than having the appropriate base package set up a /dev/null
alternative, I think it would be better for it to 
Depend/Recommend/Suggest: x-cursor-theme

But even then it would not solve your problem: xcursor-themes is
priority 30 while adwaita-icon-theme is priority 90. adwaita gets
priority under the default auto configuration of the alternative.

So what you want is to install the xcursor-themes package, and then set
the alternative manually to core.theme using 
    update-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme


Since making libxcursor1 Depend on xcursor-themes doesn't actually
solve your problem (you need to configure the alternative manually
anyway), I don't think any packaging changes are needed. It's a
personal preference to prefer the core theme over adwaita.  So I think 
we can close this bug.

Drew