[Pkg-net-snmp-devel] Bug#953948: Bug#953948: Adding versions

[Craig Small]

On Sun, 6 Sep 2020 at 11:24, Diederik de Haas <didi.debian at cknow.org> wrote:
> I actually don't understand why a (net-)SNMP library has a *dependency* on a
> database to begin with (let alone MySQL).
libsnmp40 package depends on the mysql library because
libnetsnmptrapd.so needs it. Previous versions of packages incorrectly
did not have this dependency which meant if you ran snmptrapd it
sometimes might not work.

So we are at a "strictly correct but annoying for some people stage".
You cannot use Suggests or Recommends because the library needs it.

There are a few options.

One would be to move libsnmptrapd.so into its own package. This would
mean the database libraries only pulled in if you install snmptrapd or
libsnmp-dev (unless that was split too and that would messy). This
solves it easily, but only for some people.

Or, there could be two libsnmp packages, one with a linked MySQL and
one without. Or possibly two libsnmptrap packages if combined with the
first option.

With some upstream changes there could be:
 * dynamic loading of MySQL into libsnmptrapd when required
 * A plugin/module for the library; this is a lot of changes to the source-code

Probably having the two libraries should do it.

 - Craig