[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#1110668: cockpit-bridge: upgrade from bookworm to trixie/bookworm-backports missing pcp as a dependency

[Martin Pitt]

Control: tag -1 moreinfo

Hello Itsuki,

sorry for the late reply!

Itsuki Moroshima [2025-08-10  2:18 +0800]:
> When upgrade from bookworm, the `cockpit-bridge` replaces `cockpit-pcp`. But
> the function provided by `cockpit-pcp` (which used to be a sug package of
> `cockpit` package) cannot be simply replaced by `python3-pcp`. Due to the
> missing of `pcp` package, cockpit cannot work properly.
>
> Maybe directly suggest `pcp` as a dependency can solve the problem.

cockpit-bridge currently suggests python3-pcp, which is enough to be able to
*read* existing PCP data if it already exists. But it is not Cockpit's place
(especially not the bridge component) to suggest installing an active service
component, as that changes the system behaviour -- and in a quite intrusive way
in PCP's case.

So IMHO the earlier "Depends: pcp" of the former cockpit-pcp package was too
strong and wrong.

The intention is that if `pcp` is missing, and the admin actually wants the
service, the page will show an on-demand install button in the UI. However,
this only works if `packagekit` is installed.

How did that actually "break" your upgrade? Did apt remove the "pcp" package as
it was only a former dependency of cockpit-pcp? Then I suppose a `Suggests:`
may not help, but Recommends: would really be too strong. Then we'll have to
live with that error, and I'll just add a NEWS entry instead.

Thanks,

Martin