Bug#729238: vlc-nox should not depend on libsmbclient

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

	Hello,

Le dimanche 10 novembre 2013, 17:01:58 bns_robson a écrit :
> I only use vlc-nox to play local files and streams from the Internet
> and do not play files from SMB servers. I therefore do not want any
> libraries or programs for SMB on my computer.

There are a lot of dependencies to VLC. It would be highly impractical to 
split them all out to different packages. More importantly, it would become a 
support hell as users would not know which plugins to install and so the 
software would just fail.

I fail to see how smbclient is special; so far all network plugins are 
included in vlc-nox for simplicity. There are far more obscure or rarely used 
libraries that the vlc-nox package depends on.

> By depending on libsmbclient, vlc-noc forces the installation of
> libsmbclient and other packages for SMB (the change in libsmbclient
> on Jessie from 2:3.6 to 2:4.0 greatly increases the number/size
> of other packages for SMB that will be installed).
> 
> vlc-nox should be changed to only recommend/suggest libsmbclient
> and work without it installed when not playing from SMB servers.
> This is how mount works. If you're mounting SMB then you need
> SMB packages installed otherwise you don't.

Actually you have to install the SMB and CIFS kernel modules with the normal 
kernel package(s) from Debian, even if you do not ever load them. Same with 
VLC really.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/