Bug#1085228: zutty should not Provides: x-terminal-emulator

[Jesse Rhodes <jesse@sney.ca>]

Source: zutty
Severity: normal
X-Debbugs-Cc: deity@lists.debian.org, jesse@sney.ca

Dear Maintainer,

I believe this is actually an apt bug, so copying deity, but maybe you'll see my point:

There is a difficult-to-reproduce condition where some other package Depends/Recommends x-terminal-emulator, and via dependency resolution, apt installs zutty to satisfy it. 

I ran into it today while setting up a test VM [1], and I've seen it reported several times in support channels. 

I suspect without evidence that apt is reverse sorting the list with the goal of selecting xterm. 

And of course, zutty requires specific graphical support or else it won't launch. 

I think someone who wants to use zutty will install it intentionally, so the Provides: doesn't help zutty in particular, and removing it would help protect other users from a new install with no working terminal emulator, at least until the apt bug is sorted.

Thanks for your work,

sney 

[1] https://file.sney.ca/txt/1cq4/


-- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.11.2-amd64 (SMP w/16 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_WARN, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled