>>>>> On 2018-07-25 10:27:15 +0200, Harald Dunkel wrote:

        [Please do not Cc: me, for I’m “on the list,” so to say, and
        I try to reserve my inbox for private communication only.]

>>>>> Harald Dunkel <harald.dun...@aixigo.de> writes:

 > Package: xterm
 > Version: 333-1

 > xterm recommends x11-utils.  Assuming the default configuration, this
 > brings in a huge list of packages unrelated to xterm's main purpose:
 > Running a shell or another cli program.  Sample:

[…]

 > The following additional packages will be installed:
 >    libdrm-amdgpu1 libdrm-intel1 libdrm-nouveau2 libdrm-radeon1
 >    libfontenc1 libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libglapi-mesa
 >    libllvm3.9 libpciaccess0 libtxc-dxtn-s2tc libxcb-glx0
 >    libxcb-shape0 libxtst6 libxv1 libxxf86dga1 libxxf86vm1 x11-utils
 >    xbitmaps

[…]

 > If I manually omit x11-utils, then installing xterm uses just about
 > 2 MByte.

        Note that it’s also possible to configure apt_preferences(5)
        to avoid installation of unwanted packages (regardless of them
        being recommended.)  E. g. (though in this case it’s likely
        libgl1-mesa-dri that rather should be avoided, see below):

$ cat < /etc/apt/preferences.d/55-no-x11-utils.pref 
Explanation: The x11-utils package is not welcome on this system.
Package:
 x11-utils
Pin: release c=main
Pin-Priority: -42

$ 

[…]

        What’s going on here is that x11-utils contains, among others,
        the /usr/bin/xdriinfo program, which is linked against libGL.
        As such, the binary package automatically gets Depends: libgl1,
        which is in turn dependent on libglx0 ← libglx-mesa0 ←
        libgl1-mesa-dri, the last of which is itself large enough, and
        also brings in a whole world of dependencies, as I’ve noted
        in http://bugs.debian.org/960133 .

        There’re several ways to resolve the issue, one of which is
        indeed to move luit into a package of its own, though I can’t
        say I’m particularly fond of practices that lead to the
        expansion of the Packages files, as well as /var/lib/dpkg/.

        FWIW, I haven’t noticed any ill effects due to the workaround
        described in #960133 on Buster, but haven’t yet tested it
        on Bullseye.  Given that DRI modules are more often than not
        useless without appropriate proprietary GPU software,
        downgrading dependency on libgl1-mesa-dri to Recommends:
        makes every sense to me.

        Perhaps we should try to find and merge all such bugs together
        and record ‘affects’ accordingly, to give the issue a tad more
        attention and better cooperation / coordination?  Thoughts?

-- 
FSF associate member #7257  http://am-1.org/~ivan/

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