[Pkg-xfce-devel] Why does xfswitch-plugin depend on so many (Gnome) packages?

[mem at datakon.se (Magnus Sandberg)]

Dear all,

I'm installing a Debain Wheezy system with Xfce.

My goal is to have a minimalistic installation without Gnome packages. With 
minimalistic I mean that I don't want to install things I don't use, but 
still have a perfectly usable system. So no games but LibreOffice, etc.

I got to the point when I planned to install xfswitch-plugin but that gave 
me a shock with so many dependencies.

I will give you some background. During the installation,
I selected Advanced Options -> Expert Install. I only selected
"SSH server" (task-ssh-server) and "Standard system utilities" (standard).
After that I have added packets one by one, most of the time not installing 
recommended packages.

Up to now I have 782 packages installed (dpkg -l | grep ^ii | wc -l).
The X-system has about 101 packages
(dpkg -l | egrep -i '(x11|xfce|xorg)' | wc -l)


No to the sad part. For the moment I have 2 or 3 package from the Gnome 
system:
dpkg -l | grep -i gnome
ii  gnome-icon-theme     3.4.0-2          all      GNOME Desktop icon theme
ii  libgail-3-0:amd64    3.4.2-3          amd64    GNOME Accessibility ...
ii  libxml2:amd64        2.8.0+dfsg1-5    amd64    GNOME XML library

If I try to install xfswitch-plugin, I get a load of things I don't think 
is really needed. Why depend on gdm3 when I have lightdm installed, etc?


# aptitude -d -R install xfswitch-plugin
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  accountsservice{a} dconf-tools{a} gconf-service{a} gconf2-common{a} 
  gdm3{a} gir1.2-freedesktop{a} gir1.2-glib-2.0{a} 
  gnome-desktop3-data{a} gnome-session-bin{a} gnome-settings-daemon{a} 
  libaccountsservice0{a} libaspell15{a} libcanberra-gtk0{a} 
  libcanberra-gtk3-0{a} libcanberra0{a} libelf1{a} libenchant1c2a{a} 
  libgconf-2-4{a} libgeoclue0{a} libgirepository-1.0-1{a} 
  libglib2.0-bin{a} libgnome-desktop-3-2{a} libgnomekbd-common{a} 
  libgnomekbd7{a} libgtop2-7{a} libgtop2-common{a} libimobiledevice2{a} 
  libjavascriptcoregtk-3.0-0{a} libjson-glib-1.0-0{a} 
  libmetacity-private0a{a} libpackagekit-glib2-14{a} libplist1{a} 
  libpulse-mainloop-glib0{a} libtdb1{a} libupower-glib1{a} 
  libusbmuxd1{a} libvorbisfile3{a} libwacom-common{a} libwacom2{a} 
  libwebkitgtk-3.0-0{a} libwebkitgtk-3.0-common{a} metacity{a} 
  metacity-common{a} nautilus-data{a} pm-utils{a} policykit-1-gnome{a} 
  powermgmt-base{a} upower{a} usbmuxd{a} xfswitch-plugin zenity{a} 
  zenity-common{a} 
The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed:
  aspell-am aspell-ar aspell-ar-large aspell-bg aspell-br aspell-ca 
  aspell-cs aspell-cy aspell-da aspell-de aspell-de-alt aspell-el 
  aspell-en aspell-eo aspell-eo-cx7 aspell-es aspell-et aspell-eu-es 
  aspell-fa aspell-fi aspell-fo aspell-fr aspell-ga aspell-gl-minimos 
  aspell-he aspell-hr aspell-hsb aspell-hu aspell-hy aspell-is 
  aspell-it aspell-kk aspell-ku aspell-lt aspell-lv aspell-nl aspell-no 
  aspell-pl aspell-pt-br aspell-pt-pt aspell-ro aspell-ru aspell-sk 
  aspell-sl aspell-sv aspell-tl aspell-uk aspell-uz at-spi enchant 
  gnome-themes-standard gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad 
  gstreamer0.10-plugins-good hwdata libatk-adaptor 
  libcanberra-gtk-module libcanberra-gtk3-module nautilus packagekit 
  pulseaudio python-aptdaemon.pkcompat vbetool xserver-xephyr 
0 packages upgraded, 52 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Need to get 22.6 MB of archives. After unpacking 99.6 MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] n
Abort.

If I should go without "-R", I would get 263 new packages. I think even 52 
new packages is to much for user switching plugin. 263 packages would be 
crazy.


I can provide the complete list of installed packages, if needed. But I 
think this should be enough to rethink the dependencies.

Regards,

// Mem
Debian user/admin since testing was called potato!