Re: further package removals/potential package removals

[Tyler Larson <fedora-devel tlarson com>]

Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> gnome-vfs2-smb package requires samba-common through a library dep
> libsmbclient.so.0
> However,  nautilus requires gnome-vfs2-smb though an explicit requires
> on gnome-vfs2-smb, a decision made by the packager to ensure that the
> runtime detectable smb support is always available when nautilus is
> installed to provide a perfectly reasonable and recommended default
> behavior for the average gnome desktop user.  Some would argue doing
> this is bending the purpose of 'requires' field out of necessity  to
> be used as a 'suggests' or 'recommends' field which rpm doesn't yet
> have support for.

The problem here is that the "recommended default" then becomes a forced 
necessity. Suddenly, instead of a cool feature, you've got bloat. 
"Defaults" should be handled by anaconda, not RPM. In the absence of a 
more elegant way of "recommending" a package other than with a 
dependancy, the recommendation should simply be left off. If you're 
going to require an add-on package, then there's really no point to 
putting it in a separate package anyway. The whole situation is 
nonsense, really.

But then, this isn't the first time we've had this discussion. However, 
certain key individuals are convinced that things are fine the way they 
are, and need no fixing.

Yes, dependacy bloat is a problem, but it's not going to be fixed until 
the responsible persons are convinced that a problem actually exists.