ubuntu-fan recommends netcat package in universe

[Philip Roche]

Following some debug of the docker.io package in universe, we (Canonical CPC) discovered that the ubuntu-fan package from main and the netcat-traditional package from universe were being installed.

This was due to the following dependency/recommends tree:

* docker.io (in universe) recommends ubuntu-fan (main)
* ubuntu-fan (main) recommends netcat (universe)
* netcat (universe) is a transitional package and depends on netcat-traditional (universe)

Our concern is that this might be a packaging violation as ubuntu-fan is recommending a package not in main.

> In addition, the packages in main
>
> must not require a package outside of main for compilation or execution (thus, the package must
> not declare a "Depends", "Recommends", or "Build-Depends" relationship on a non-main package),

Source: https://people.canonical.com/~cjwatson/ubuntu-policy/policy.html/ch-archive.html#s-main

I will file a bug against netcat too to start a discussion on netcat being built from netcat-openbsd (main) instead of netcat-traditional (universe).

Our feeling is that netcat is such a frequently depended on or recommended package that it being present in main would benefit Ubuntu.

[Philip Roche (philroche)]

It appears that a bug was already filed against netcat

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/netcat-openbsd/+bug/1780316