[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] libdbus-1-3: Change "recommand" dbus to "suggest"

[Alexandre Alapetite]

2009/6/14 Michael Biebl <biebl at debian.org>:
> Hi

Thank you for your fast response.

> Alexandre Alapetite wrote:
>> Package: libdbus-1-3
>> Version: 1.2.14-2 (unstable)
>>
>> I think libdbus should "suggest" but not "recommend" dbus.
>>
>> I am actually on Ubuntu server, but I think this report is best at
>> Debian level.
>>
>> My use-case is the installation of VideoLAN VLC http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
>>
>> I have install VLC-nox (VLC without GUI aimed for a server) with
>> recommended packages (default behaviour), and I ended up with
>> unnecessary packages (dbus, dbus-x11, consolekit) causing many errors.
>
> What errors?

Mainly related to consolekit, including the fact that it uses tens of
processes. But as you say later, this is finally not a Debian problem:

Jun 13 06:40:01 r23968 console-kit-daemon[14140]: CRITICAL: cannot
initialize libpolkit
Jun 13 06:40:01 r23968 console-kit-daemon[14140]: WARNING: Error
waiting for native console 44 activation: Bad file descriptor
Jun 13 06:40:01 r23968 kernel: console-kit-dae[14214] trap divide
error ip:7f410a94712c sp:7f4109c2a080 error:0 in
libglib-2.0.so.0.2000.1[7f410a91a000+c3000]
...
Jun 13 16:51:02 r23968 console-kit-daemon[16829]: CRITICAL: cannot
initialize libpolkit
Jun 13 16:52:01 r23968 console-kit-daemon[16927]: CRITICAL: cannot
initialize libpolkit
Jun 13 16:53:01 r23968 console-kit-daemon[17025]: CRITICAL: cannot
initialize libpolkit
... and so on every minute

>> I believe dbus and consolekit should not have been installed for
>> VLC-nox.
>
> FWIW, dbus in Debian (unstable) does not longer recommend dbus-x11, so it
> shouldn't be installed by default

Good change for dbus-x11.

>>
>> Here is the dependency chain:
>>
>> vlc-nox --(depends on)--> libdbus --(recommends)--> dbus --(depends
>> on)--> consolekit
>
> This is not the case for Debian. The Debian dbus package does not depend on
> consolekit.

Oh yes indeed, sorry, my bad http://packages.debian.org/sid/dbus
So this is only an Ubuntu problem.

> Anyways, any application linking against libdbus usually wants a working D-Bus
> stack (otherwise it wouldn't use D-Bus in the first place). One could argue,
> that each such application should have a direct Depends on dbus.
>
> The Recommends in libdbus is a sensible default, because that is what you
> usually want, and I don't think we want to change that.
> Thanks to being a recommends, you have the option to, to choose not to install
> dbus, if you know what you are doing.

This makes sense (although some applications might have different
behaviours in their desktop vs. server version, while sharing a common
core that is linked to libdbus).

> Thanks,
> Michael
>

All the best,
Alexandre
http://alexandre.alapetite.fr