[libvirt PATCH] spec: libvirt-daemon: Add optional dependency on *-client

[Jiri Denemark]

On Fri, Nov 04, 2022 at 10:09:31 -0600, Jim Fehlig wrote:
> On 11/4/22 09:22, Martin Kletzander wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 03, 2022 at 05:24:18PM +0100, Jiri Denemark wrote:
> >> The libvirt-daemon subpackage contains libvirt-guests.sh script (used by
> >> libvirt-guests service), which requires virsh to actually work. But
> >> since dynamic libraries were separated from libvirt-client to
> >> libvirt-libs more than 6 years ago, libvirt-daemon no longer requires
> >> virsh to be installed. So unless libvirt-client is explicitly installed
> >> (either manually or by installing the libvirt meta package),
> >> libvirt-guests will not work.
> >>
> >> Just adding libvirt-client as a dependency of libvirt-daemon would go
> >> against the original idea behind splitting libvirt-client: users may not
> >> want to install or use any client binaries on the host where the daemon
> >> runs (either they just use various language bindings or access the
> >> daemon remotely). To solve this we could possibly turn libvirt-daemon
> >> into an empty package and separate the daemons and libvirt-guests into
> >> subpackages to make sure we support both use cases, but marking
> >> libvirt-client as Recommended for libvirt-daemon does the same job in a
> >> much simpler way.
> >>
> > 
> > Or you could just move the libvirt-guests files to libvirt-client
> > package since they couldn't work without it anyway.
> 
> This actually seems like a better approach, especially in the context of modular 
> daemons.

I think installing system services as part of libvirt-client is even
stranger than requiring libvirt-client as a dependency of the daemon
package.

It would make more sense to split the daemon package, separate the
monolithic daemon, proxy, and libvirt-guests so that one can only
install the parts that are actually needed when using modular daemons,
but I think it's quite an overkill for several reasons. First, the
monolithic daemon is supposed to completely disappear at some point. And
the ancient libvirt-guests service should really be replaced by a
solution implemented by the daemons themselves. And not only because the
libvirt-guests service may cause a modular daemon to be started when a
host is being shut down in case no domain is running.

Jirka