[Pkg-libvirt-maintainers] Bug#912725: Bug#912725: virtinst: Please demote virtinst recommends on virt-viewer to suggests

[Guido Günther]

Hi,
On Tue, Feb 04, 2025 at 11:43:41PM +0100, Andrea Bolognani wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 26, 2023 at 10:47:53PM +0100, Guido Günther wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 26, 2023 at 01:27:11PM -0800, Matt Taggart wrote:
> > > Interestingly, the virt-manager package only Suggests virt-viewer but, if
> > > anything, I would think the dependency would be stronger there? So maybe
> > > Recommends or even Depends? But I guess it's possible to use virt-manager to
> > > manage VMs without ever needing to launch virt-viewer, so maybe Suggests is
> > > correct there as well.
> > 
> > virt-manager merely suggests virt-viewer since it's basically a useful
> > tool to have too (virt-manager doesn't need virt-viewer to show any
> > consoles) so a very weak relation makes sense
> 
> Agreed, virt-manager can do pretty much everything virt-viewer can
> and loads more, so the Suggests makes sense there.
> 
> > virtinst recommends virt-viewer so people installing it get a set of
> > tools to install VMs and connect to their UI so a stronger relation
> > looks justified to me.
> > 
> > It's not a dependency as (as you note) there are use cases where it
> > works without virt-viewer but the default should (in my opinion) be
> > to have a working set and not let the user figure out why they can't
> > connect to their VMs UI.
> 
> I would also like to see the Recommends demoted to a Suggests.
> 
> One of the primary use cases of virt-install is setting up headless
> guests on a headless host, and the additional dependencies get in the
> way there. Plus virt-install provides good, actionable feedback for
> those cases where having virt-viewer available would actually make
> things better:
> 
>   WARNING  Unable to connect to graphical console: virt-viewer is not
>            installed. Please install the 'virt-viewer' package.

I think that's good enough to lower the dependency.
Cheers,
 -- Guido

> 
> Note additionally that Debian seems to be in the minority here: I
> checked Fedora, openSUSE, Arch and Alpine, and for none of those
> virt-viewer is dragged in along with virt-install.
> 
> Can we please reconsider this?
> 
> -- 
> Andrea Bolognani <eof at kiyuko.org>
> Resistance is futile, you will be garbage collected.