Bug#496247: libpango1.0-0 depends on libx11-6 although it claims to be able to render for other means of output

[Olaf Schulz]

Salut,
On Thu, Mar 05, 2009 at 03:32:24PM +0100, Loïc Minier wrote:
>         Hi
> 
> On Sat, Aug 23, 2008, Olaf Schulz wrote:
> > I need libpango as a dependency of librrd4 to generate
> > graphics from rrdtool for output on a (monitoring) web server.
> > 
> > Installing the current version of libpango1.0 would start introducing
> > X11 libraries on to the system which would be completely unnecessary
> > otherwise. I admit that I'm afraid to have a complete gnome system
> > within 2 years of package upgrades.
> > 
> > Either the description 
> > " four different font backends:
> > ...
> > - Direct rendering of scalable fonts using the FreeType library"
> > 
> > or the dependency from libx11-6 and libxrender1
> > (and libx11-6 depending on x11-common in turn) seems to be at least bloating
> > in some uses of the package.
> > 
> > If the X11 dependency of some packages is achieved only by letting them depend
> > on libpango, would there be some other way? (yes, I guess that this is not a
> > package specific issue but rather a conceptual one).
> 
>  Thanks for your report.
> 
>  % ldd -r /usr/lib/librrd.so.4 | awk '{ print $1 }' >librrd4
>  % ldd -r /usr/lib/libpangoxft-1.0.so.0 | awk '{ print $1 }' | grep -v -xFf librrd4
> libXft.so.2
> 
>  So that's the only thing which you'd save if I were to split
>  libpangoxft out; given the ridiculously large size of the librrd4 dep
>  tree, I don't think it would be useful and am closing this bug.
> 
>  Please reopen if necessary.

The problem from a user's (server admin's) point of view is,
that the package libpango1.0-0 itself depends from a lot of other packages,
which, in turn depend on a lot of other packages which would not be needed
otherwise.

I can't find out, it it would be possible to create a package
'libpango-mimimal' which would provide libpango  without the bunch of features
all the other dependencies are providing.

 % apt-cache depends libpango1.0-0
libpango1.0-0
  Depends: libpango1.0-common
  Depends: libc6
  Depends: libcairo2
  Depends: libdatrie0
  Depends: libfontconfig1
  Depends: libfreetype6
  Depends: libglib2.0-0
  Depends: libthai0
  Depends: libx11-6
  Depends: libxft2
  Depends: libxrender1
  Depends: zlib1g
  Conflicts: <pango-libthai>

and when I try to install libpango1.0-0 on a system without X11 libraries, I would get:

% sudo apt-get install libpango1.0-0
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  defoma fontconfig fontconfig-config libcairo2 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libfontconfig1
  libfreetype6 libpango1.0-common libpixman-1-0 libpng12-0 libthai-data libthai0
  libts-0.0-0 libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxcb-render-util0 libxcb-render0
  libxcb-xlib0 libxcb1 libxdmcp6 libxft2 libxrender1 ttf-dejavu ttf-dejavu-core
  ttf-dejavu-extra
Suggested packages:
  defoma-doc dfontmgr psfontmgr x-ttcidfont-conf libfreetype6-dev ttf-kochi-gothic
  ttf-kochi-mincho ttf-thryomanes ttf-baekmuk ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp
  ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp ttf-arphic-gkai00mp ttf-arphic-bkai00mp
Recommended packages:
  libft-perl
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  defoma fontconfig fontconfig-config libcairo2 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libfontconfig1
  libfreetype6 libpango1.0-0 libpango1.0-common libpixman-1-0 libpng12-0
  libthai-data libthai0 libts-0.0-0 libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6
  libxcb-render-util0 libxcb-render0 libxcb-xlib0 libxcb1 libxdmcp6 libxft2
  libxrender1 ttf-dejavu ttf-dejavu-core ttf-dejavu-extra
0 upgraded, 27 newly installed, 0 to remove and 102 not upgraded.
Need to get 8905kB of archives.
After this operation, 20.5MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.

And this, although I already would not install recommended packages automatically:
% apt-config dump|grep -i recommend
APT::Install-Recommends "0";

So I do not know a way out of this situation but I find it a bit annoying having to pull such a lot of packages, among them a some which are only necessary for ouput on displays (which is definitely not a server's task):
  libdirectfb-1.0-0 libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxcb-render-util0 libxcb-render0 libxcb-xlib0 libxcb1 libxdmcp6 libxrender1

Kind regards,
Olaf