Bug#1092632: evolution-data-server: Please don't depend on gnome-keyring

[Jeremy Bícha]

On Thu, Jan 9, 2025 at 11:57 PM Tim Connors
<reportbug at rather.puzzling.org> wrote:
> Per bugs 1092631 823492 841909 842015 842334 842908 845565 853066
> 559101 801247 and 795368, it would be really neat if any machine that
> had evolution installed didn't also mandate pinentry-gnome3.
>
> desktop pulls in evolution.  evolution pulls in evolution-data-server.
> evolution-data-server mandates gnome-keyring.  Gnome-keyring (probably
> sensibly) mandates pinentry-gnome3.
>
> But evolution doesn't appear to actually need gnome-keyring.  Maybe
> "recommends" would be a better option?  Or
> gnome-keyring|pinentry-gtk2|pinentry-qt (still only recommends,
> because you don't *need* gpg keys in order to be able to read and
> answer email) or something like that.

Maybe this part is nitpicking: evolution depends on
evolution-data-server which it definitely needs. So we can ignore the
part about evolution and just focus on evolution-data-server (which I
guess you somewhat realized since you did file the bug against the
right package.). Also, the "gnome" metapackage is irrelevant since
gnome-core depends on evolution-data-server. You don't need to have
evolution or "gnome" if you don't want to. I'd recommend keeping
"gnome-core" installed but that isn't required either; you just have
to handle making sure you have the components installed that you want.

Simon laid out a rough summary of the work needed here. Someone would
need to verify whether an alternate implementation fulfills all the
usecases that gnome-keyring does. If the verification succeeds, we may
want to introduce a virtual package to represent this.

I don't think anyone from the Debian GNOME team is working on this
project now so it's unlikely to happen in time for Debian 13 later
this year. It is a good idea to explore but the team is small and have
other priorities as we finish up Debian 13.

Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha