[Debian-ha-maintainers] Bug#1085256: fence-agents: fence-agents package does not depend on any actual package

[Guillem Jover]

Hi!

On Sun, 2024-11-03 at 15:24:07 +0100, Valentin Vidic wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 17, 2024 at 03:47:10PM +0200, Michael Prokop wrote:
> > That could be worth a thought, yes. Having a good upgrade path even
> > for users without Recommends enabled, but at the same time also
> > having the option to install only *certain* fence-agents is
> > definitely a worthwhile goal. :)
> 
> How about including all the packages in Depends, but introducting a
> virtual package fence-agent:
> 
> Package: fence-agents
> Depends: fence-agents-ack-manual, fence-agents-aliyun, fence-agents-alom, ...
> 
> Package: fence-agents-ack-manual
> Provides: fence-agent
> 
> Package: fence-agents-aliyun
> Provides: fence-agent
> 
> Package: fence-agents-alom
> Provides: fence-agent
> 
> Package: pacemaker
> Recommends: fence-agents | fence-agent, pacemaker-cli-utils
> 
> Now during upgrade the users can select to install all agents with
> increased disk usage by default or to only keep the few agents they
> really need.

There is precedent for this kind of packaging pattern for example:

  Package: xserver-xorg
  Depends:
   […]
   xserver-xorg-input-all | xorg-driver-input,
   xserver-xorg-video-all | xorg-driver-video,

  Package: libva2
  Recommends:
   […]
   va-driver-all | va-driver,

  Package: libvdpau1
  Recommends:
   […]
   vdpau-driver-all | vdpau-driver,

(And other like: soapysdr-module-all, mupen64plus-input-all,
mupen64plus-video-all, mupen64plus-audio-all, mupen64plus-rsp-all.)

But, yeah I think it would make sense to have a package that has
strong dependencies on either all or the most used/important ones (and
the reset as Recommends like the xserver-xorg-*-all ones). That could
be either the existing fence-agents or a new fence-agents-all, and as
you mention then adding the fence-agent virtuals.

Thanks,
Guillem