[Pkg-samba-maint] Bug#901654: cifs-utils: should not depend on samba-common

[Wolfgang Schweer]

Package: cifs-utils
Version: 2:6.8-1
Severity: wishlist

User:     debian-edu at lists.debian.org
Usertags: debian-edu

Hi,

while installing cifs-utils (testing Debian Edu Buster), I noticed that a lot
of other packages are pulled in (like samba-common and samba-common-bin).

IMO this isn't needed.

Quoting https://www.kernel.org/doc/readme/Documentation-filesystems-cifs-README:
"Note that the cifs vfs, unlike the smbfs vfs, does not read the smb.conf
on the client system (the few optional settings are passed in on mount
via -o parameters instead)."

So unlike the previous smbfs, cifs does not rely on Samba (like smb.conf and
tools shipped with samba-common-bin).

Please consider to lower the Depends on samba-common to a Suggests.

This might also prevent errors; see e.g.
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=900908

Wolfgang