Bug#904572: move x11-utils to Suggests
>>>>> On 2018-07-25 10:27:15 +0200, Harald Dunkel wrote:
[Please do not Cc: me, for I’m “on the list,” so to say, and
I try to reserve my inbox for private communication only.]
>>>>> Harald Dunkel <harald.dunkel@aixigo.de> writes:
> Package: xterm
> Version: 333-1
> xterm recommends x11-utils. Assuming the default configuration, this
> brings in a huge list of packages unrelated to xterm's main purpose:
> Running a shell or another cli program. Sample:
[…]
> The following additional packages will be installed:
> libdrm-amdgpu1 libdrm-intel1 libdrm-nouveau2 libdrm-radeon1
> libfontenc1 libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libglapi-mesa
> libllvm3.9 libpciaccess0 libtxc-dxtn-s2tc libxcb-glx0
> libxcb-shape0 libxtst6 libxv1 libxxf86dga1 libxxf86vm1 x11-utils
> xbitmaps
[…]
> If I manually omit x11-utils, then installing xterm uses just about
> 2 MByte.
Note that it’s also possible to configure apt_preferences(5)
to avoid installation of unwanted packages (regardless of them
being recommended.) E. g. (though in this case it’s likely
libgl1-mesa-dri that rather should be avoided, see below):
$ cat < /etc/apt/preferences.d/55-no-x11-utils.pref
Explanation: The x11-utils package is not welcome on this system.
Package:
x11-utils
Pin: release c=main
Pin-Priority: -42
$
[…]
What’s going on here is that x11-utils contains, among others,
the /usr/bin/xdriinfo program, which is linked against libGL.
As such, the binary package automatically gets Depends: libgl1,
which is in turn dependent on libglx0 ← libglx-mesa0 ←
libgl1-mesa-dri, the last of which is itself large enough, and
also brings in a whole world of dependencies, as I’ve noted
in http://bugs.debian.org/960133 .
There’re several ways to resolve the issue, one of which is
indeed to move luit into a package of its own, though I can’t
say I’m particularly fond of practices that lead to the
expansion of the Packages files, as well as /var/lib/dpkg/.
FWIW, I haven’t noticed any ill effects due to the workaround
described in #960133 on Buster, but haven’t yet tested it
on Bullseye. Given that DRI modules are more often than not
useless without appropriate proprietary GPU software,
downgrading dependency on libgl1-mesa-dri to Recommends:
makes every sense to me.
Perhaps we should try to find and merge all such bugs together
and record ‘affects’ accordingly, to give the issue a tad more
attention and better cooperation / coordination? Thoughts?
--
FSF associate member #7257 http://am-1.org/~ivan/
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