[Pkg-samba-maint] Bug#878612: please drop dependency on python-talloc from samba-libs

[Andrew Bartlett]

(re-send on new bug for python-talloc subtask)

On Sat, 2017-10-14 at 20:40 -0400, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> Control: clone 781913 -1
> Control: retitle -1 please drop dependency on python-talloc from samba-libs
> Control: affects -1 + mpd
> 
> On Sat 2015-04-04 22:10:14 +0200, Matthias Klose wrote:
> > On 04/04/2015 08:47 PM, Jelmer Vernooij wrote:
> > > So if we could move that functionality out to a separate library that
> > > is not included with samba-libs, we could drop the dependency on
> > > python2 in samba-libs.
> > 
> > right, that would get rid off python libs and python-talloc.  However there is
> > another path in that nautilus-share depends on samba-common | samba-common-bin,
> > which depend on python-samba.
> 
> Please don't block fixing this python2 dependency of samba-libs on
> fixing the other python2 issues in samba-common and samba-common-bin.
> there are other packages (e.g. mpd) that Depend: samba-libs and do not
> have this additional dependency.
> 
> Fixing the dependency of samba-libs on python-talloc in its own right
> would be a win for minimal systems that run mpd but don't want to carry
> around an unnecessary python interpreter.

Even this is a significant amount of work.  The challenge with
splitting up samba-libs is that there are a lot of libraries which
depend on each other.  Early Samba4 packages did split things into one
package per library, but it became unmanagable. 

One possible approach would be to create a samba-base-libs which
contains the things libsmbclient depends on, which hopefully does not
include python-talloc. 

The alternate, removing just the python dependency from samba-libs
would require more work I think, plus removing or re-structuring the
code in source4/libnet/provision.c that calls into python (rather than
python calling Samba, which is otherwise the pattern). 

I hope this helps.  I do need to make clear that we need significant
help if you wish to see progress here, plus work may be needed upstream
to change the libraries the build system produces.  On the hopeful
side, upstream Samba did merge patches to allow a build without linking
to python recently. 

Thanks!

Andrew Bartlett
-- 
Andrew Bartlett                       http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team  http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT          http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba