convirt depends on xen-utils and xen-hypervisor when not necessary

[Tessa]

Binary package hint: convirt

Convirt can be used to manage remote Xen and KVM hosts via SSH. However, the package insists on installing the xen tools and hypervisor on the local system, converting it to a xen host even when unwanted. Those packages should be Recommends, not Depends in the convirt package, so that it can still be used as a remote management tool.

[Jd (jd-jedi)]

ConVirt requires Xen client library to talk to the remote xen.
xen-hypervisor is certainly not required. python-xen is required.

[Tessa (unit3)]

Ok, so python-xen-* and libxen3* are required, but not xen-utils-* (which tries to start xend at boot) or xen-hypervisor (which changes your boot setup). Is that about the sum of it?

[Jd (jd-jedi)]

Yes in theory.
I would see if some one can give it a try and confirm this practically.

[Tessa (unit3)]

Well, from the upstream source package (0.9.6), I can run it with just python-xen-3.3 and libxen3-3.3.0-1ubuntu7 installed (no xen-utils or xen-hypervisor), so it looks like that set of deps should be fine.

[Tessa (unit3)]

Their own Ubuntu/Debian packages available through their repo (http://www.convirture.com/repos/definitions/ubuntu/8.x/convirt.list) don't have this problem. Perhaps their packages just need to get merged into the distribution proper?

[Tessa (unit3)]

It looks like their packages now do have this problem. Can someone talk to upstream and get this fixed?

[Tessa (unit3)]

Actually, looks like my copy of apt was pulling in old deps. The upstream packages are fine, they still don't have this problem. Anyone know why the Ubuntu repo packages have different deps than the upstream ones? And how we can get the latest upstream packages into Ubuntu, instead of the old / buggy ones we have now?