[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] dbus-launch dependency on X11

[Sjoerd Simons]

On Mon, Dec 25, 2006 at 07:16:07PM +0100, Bram Stolk wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> 
> Is there a way to lose the X11 dependency for dbus?
> Maybe split the dbus package into two parts?
> E.g. dbus-launch as seperate package?
> 
> As it is now, I'm unable to install dbus on a machine
> without installing X11 client libs.
> 
> On my server, I am running Debian/testing, and it is
> functioning as WIFI AP, Bluetooth AP, NAT server, etc.
> 
> To run pand (PAN daemon for Personal Area Networking 
> profile of Bluetooth) I need to install dbus.
> Subsequently, dbus then requires X11, which I am trying
> to keep off my server.

Well not full X11, only libx11.. Which means about 4mb of dependencies. But yes
your right, it would be nice to have dbus not depend on any part of X.. 

The problem is that for a session bus you will need dbus-launch. So to provide
a fully functional dbus package, it's kinda required. Now dbus-launch can be
compiled without X depends, but that lacks some functionality that you really
need when using a session bus for your X session. 

Anyway, splitting out just dbus-launch into it's own package is an option. But
i don't really like to split out a 24k binary into it's own package, just to
prevent 4mb of depends that 99.9% of the users will need anyway. At least
currently, when more daemons start using stuff like avahi, maybe hal and
ofcourse the bluetooth stack that'll change obviously. 

In the future i'd like to see a dbus-launch where the x11 stuff is indeed
optional (e.g. split out into it's own little helper), so i can still include
it in the main dbus package but have the X11 depends downgraded to just
suggests.

But all this is for Lenny (Etch+1), for Etch i'd suggests equivs as a
workaround. If you just need the system bus (which is the case for bluetooth),
that'll work fine. And hopefully by the time Lenny comes out i've got a nicer
solution for you :)

  Sjoerd
-- 
Wernher von Braun settled for a V-2 when he coulda had a V-8.