Unneeded dependencies?

[Wouter Stomp]

Binary package hint: rkward

Dependencies of the rkward package include lua and fortran libraries, gcc and several sound related libraries. Are these all really needed?

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier (tfry)]

The KDE build system pulls in all of these dependencies. While many are definitely unneeded, I don't know of a good way to get rid of them. Help on this will be appreciated.

[Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto)]

Following the gfortran transition, gcc-3.3 should not be dragged in anymore.
Can you be more specific about which libraries are dragged in which you think are not needed?

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier (tfry)]

In Debian sid (i386), rkward 0.4.9a-1 has these dependencies (likely to differ from ubuntu in a number of details):

depends
php4-cli | php5-cli, r-base-core (>= 2.4.9), kdelibs4c2a (>= 4:3.5.9), libacl1 (>= 2.2.11-1), libart-2.0-2 (>= 2.3.18), libattr1 (>= 2.4.41-1), libaudio2, libc6 (>= 2.7-1), libfam0, libfontconfig1 (>= 2.4.0), libfreetype6 (>= 2.3.5), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1-21), libice6 (>= 1:1.0.0), libidn11 (>= 0.5.18), libjpeg62, libpcre3 (>= 7.4), libpng12-0 (>= 1.2.13-4), libqt3-mt (>= 3:3.3.8b), libsm6, libstdc++6 (>= 4.1.1-21), libx11-6, libxcursor1 (>> 1.1.2), libxext6, libxft2 (>> 2.1.1), libxi6, libxinerama1, libxrandr2 (>= 2:1.2.0), libxrender1, libxt6, zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4)

recommends
r-base-html

Of these, the following are probably unneeded, as they are not used directly:
libacl1 (>= 2.2.11-1), libart-2.0-2 (>= 2.3.18), libattr1 (>= 2.4.41-1), libaudio2, libfam0, libfontconfig1 (>= 2.4.0), libfreetype6 (>= 2.3.5), libice6 (>= 1:1.0.0), libidn11 (>= 0.5.18), libjpeg62, libpcre3 (>= 7.4), libpng12-0 (>= 1.2.13-4), libsm6, libxcursor1 (>> 1.1.2), libxext6, libxft2 (>> 2.1.1), libxi6, libxinerama1, libxrandr2 (>= 2:1.2.0), libxrender1, libxt6, zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4)

The following are actually used, but should be redundant (already required by kdelibs4c2a):
libc6 (>= 2.7-1), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1-21), libqt3-mt (>= 3:3.3.8b), libx11-6, libstdc++6 (>= 4.1.1-21)

Those depends come in through dpgk-shlibdeps. dpkg-shlibdeps is not really to blame, either, though (or only for the redundant depends). The upstream build-system (autotools system with KDE specifics) insists on linking a whole lot of libraries at link-time, which are not directly used by rkward at all.

I have a strong feeling that this could be trimmed down considerably (upstream, but that happens to be myself), but I just don't have enough knowledge to do something about it.

Note that it's more of an aesthetical problem, since most (all?) of the named dependencies will be pulled in by kdelibs4c2a, anyway. Also note, that it's probably not worth investing much time on this problem for the 0.4.x series of rkward. Versions 0.5.0 and on depend on KDE 4 and use the new cmake-based build system from KDE. This suffers from similar problems, but the implementation is vastly different.

[Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto)]

I thought the bug originator meant a different issue, the deps which are dragged in by kdelibs4c2a. What you are telling me is indeed a problem that we cannot solve at distribution level but upstream (if at all solvable with the KDE autotools system).
Perhaps you may want to ask at the freenode #kubuntu channel; if there is a way to trim it they must surely know.

[Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto)]

All k-people I talked to told me its no hope for KDE 3 but things have really improved for KDE 4 (as Thomas said). I'm therefore marking this as won't fix for the time being, Please if any of you guys thinks this is not correct, let me know.