Excessive package interdependency

[Alexander Larsson]

On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 16:44, Paul Rensing wrote:
> My current "pet peeve" about Fedora right now is the excessive amount of
> unnecessary package interdependency. As specific examples:
> 
> redhat-artwork (0.88-1) requires:
> 	/usr/lib/qt-3.1
> 
> nautilus requires:
> 	gnome-vfs2-extras
> 	nautilus-cd-burner
> 
> To me, all of these are unneeded packages (for my installation, I mean).
> I maintain lots of small (old) boxes for specialized purposes and the
> few packages on them, the better (less maintenance, quick upgrades, less
> cruft). 
> 
> On these boxes, I don't run any Qt apps, yet I am forced to install qt
> to satisfy the dependency. 
> 
> Most of my boxes don't have CD burners, yet the nautilus dependency
> pulls in nautilus-cd-burner, cdrecord, and mkisofs.
> 
> Many of these boxes have no need for SMB, yet nautilus pulls in
> gnome-vfs2-extras.
> 
> I would like to see packagers (and developers) pay more attention to
> these interconnections. Packages should only "require" what is really
> needed to run; everything else should be optional.

The nautilus package dependencies was very deliberately added in order
to get "full" feature support when someone upgrades. This was done when
these packages was added to the distro, and without the dependency the
new features would not be installed on an upgrade. We considered it more
important that the majority of the Gnome desktop users didn't get half a
desktop than that someone had to install a couple of megs of possibly
unnecessary dependencies.

As long as there is no other way to handle this in the installer I stand
by my decision.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl at redhat.com    alla at lysator.liu.se 
He's an impetuous Catholic gangster looking for a cure to the poison coursing 
through his veins. She's a beautiful green-skinned mercenary with an 
incredible destiny. They fight crime!