On Tue, 23 Dec 2008, Frans Pop wrote: > Package: gettext > Version: 0.17-6 > Severity: minor > > Hello Santiago, > > While upgrading my little ARM box I noticed that gettext suddenly pulled > in libglib and libcroco. I've checked the changelog and I do understand > your reasons for making that change (although I don't quite see how CSS > manipulation fits in with a --color option). > > Result on this particular system was that size of gettext was reduced by > 160KB, but that aptitude suggested I install ~5.5MB worth of extra libs. > I managed to reduce that to ~2MB by not installing libglib2.0-data, but > still. > > gettext for me is a fairly basic command-line package and it has *44* > reverse dependencies (including very basic development tools and e.g. > kernel-package). Having its dependecies increased by so much for something > as trivial as a --color option (which I've personally never used, even if > I do use the gettext utils quite a lot) seems like bloat. > > As I say, I understand the reasons and also see this is really an upstream > issue, but I cannot help wondering if any alternatives are possible.
The dependency on libglib2.0-0 was first added by accident, as I built 0.17-5 on a system having the corresponding development package installed. However, after reading the docs I realized this library was already part of gettext, in embedded form (something which is generally considered an evil thing from the security point of view), so I decided to use libraries for all the other embedded libraries in 0.17-6. I don't think 2MB is too much by today standards. The user package is gettext-base, which does not have this dependency. gettext is the development package, which is already 8MB large. The only way to remove this dependency would be to add build-conflicts for all the external libraries, but then it would be a matter of time that someone submits a bug against gettext for using embedded libraries, as the latest policy strongly discourages it. To summarize, I think gettext in its current form is the least of two evils. May I close this bug? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
