[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#1064040: src:gnupg2: Please remove Recommends: gnupg from all binary packages

[Julian Andres Klode]

Control: tag -1 patch

On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 10:42:35AM +0100, Julian Andres Klode wrote:
> Source: gnupg2
> Severity: normal
> X-Debbugs-Cc: juliank at ubuntu.com
> 
> gnupg is a big meta package pulling in all sorts of weird stuff
> people don't want by default on their machine, like a wks server.
> 
> That wks server in experimental now pulls in a mail transport
> agent.
> 
> Hence installing gpg for example pulls in gnupg by Recommends,
> and then the wks server and then the mail transport agent. Ugh.
> 
> It stands to reason that gnupg2 should have:
> 
> 1. gnupg should move to the metapackages section
> 2. All Recommends on gnupg should be removed, we don't want that
>    installed by default.
> 3. gpg should Recommends keyboxd and dirmngr as they will frequently be
>    needed when using gpg
> 
> And then we should clean up all reverse dependencies to say gpg.
> 
> I think I plan to do this in Ubuntu. The alternative would be
> to demote all non-interesting gnupg dependencies to suggests,
> those would be:
> 
> - gnupg-utils
> - gpg-wks-server
> - gpgv [stuff will depend on that anyway if it needs it, like apt does]
> - maybe gpg-wks-client
> 
> This may make the gnupg package *actually useful* rather than
> be a pointless metapackage that nobody actually wants to install.
> 
> Let me know what you think but this surely is a mess
> we need to sort out, and I have about ~ next week to
> do so downstream.

Implemented in
https://salsa.debian.org/debian/gnupg2/-/merge_requests/13

as just uploaded to Ubuntu.

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