[Pkg-libvirt-maintainers] Bug#1025579: libvirt-dbus: dependency on transitional policykit-1 package

[Simon McVittie]

>  libvirt-dbus (1.4.1-3) unstable; urgency=medium
>  .
>    [ Andrea Bolognani ]
> ...
>    * [a352731] Drop polkit rules in legacy pkla format
>      - Makes it possible to not install / uninstall polkitd-pkla

The change is valid, but this reasoning for why it was done seems like
a misunderstanding.

You can stop installing downstream-only .pkla rules and depend on
polkitd (>= new version) if you want to, but if you do that, then the
justification is "so we can stop putting effort into them" rather than
"to make it possible to avoid polkitd-pkla".

As of Debian 12, all packages that ship custom polkit policies should
provide at least the JavaScript version of those policies. If desired,
they can also provide .pkla versions of the policies, but that doesn't
require a dependency on polkitd-pkla: if polkitd-pkla isn't installed,
then the .pkla version just won't be used (and the package will be
relying on the JavaScript rules instead).

flatpak is an example of a package that installs both JavaScript rules
(from upstream) and a rewrite of those rules into .pkla syntax (added by
the Debian maintainer). It Recommends polkitd | policykit-1 and has no
dependency relationship with polkitd-pkla, which I believe is correct.

As a result, to be able to remove polkitd-pkla, it's sufficient
for packages with dependencies on policykit-1 to replace them with
dependencies on polkitd and/or pkexec.

Thanks,
    smcv