mailutils package has dependency on mysql packages

[C. Alex Roeber]

cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=16.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=xenial
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS"

apt-get -y install --no-install-recommends mailutils
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  libmailutils4 libmysqlclient20 mysql-common
Suggested packages:
  mailutils-mh mailutils-doc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libmailutils4 libmysqlclient20 mailutils mysql-common
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 4 not upgraded.

+++++
Selecting previously unselected package mysql-common (5.7.19-0ubuntu0.16.04.1)
   Setting up mysql-common (5.7.19-0ubuntu0.16.04.1) ...
   update-alternatives: using /etc/mysql/my.cnf.fallback to provide /etc/mysql/my.cnf (my.cnf) in auto mode

Selecting previously unselected package libmysqlclient20:amd64 (5.7.19-0ubuntu0.16.04.1) ...
   Setting up libmysqlclient20:amd64 (5.7.19-0ubuntu0.16.04.1) ...

Installation of mailutils has a dependency on:
   libmysqlclient20 AND mysql-common
And should not, there is no reason to have these packages as a dependency

[C. Alex Roeber (caroeber)]

Also the documentation show that the packages are not part of the dependency list:
https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=mailutils&searchon=names&suite=zesty&section=all

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

>Also the documentation show that the packages are not part of the dependency list:

Mailutils doesn't depend on the mysql packages directly, but they seem to be pulled in through libmailutils5 (https://packages.ubuntu.com/zesty/libmailutils5).

[C. Alex Roeber (caroeber)]

Thank you, I see that now, and why does libmailutils5 need an libmysqlclient20?
I would request that if it does not really has a dependency then remove it from the dependency list.
Maybe this should be moved to the libmailutils5 package team?

[Olleg Samoylov (olleg)]

Yep, according to the mailutils documentation,

https://mailutils.org/manual/html_node/sql-statement.html#sql-statement

the mailutils can use MySQL, PostgreSQL and ODBC as SQL interface. But package (library) pulls only MySQL client. It's strange, why mailutils does depend only on MySQL client? Why is such discrimination?

[Olleg Samoylov (olleg)]

May be you don't need whole mailutils, but only a mailx client? Use other alternatives: bsd-mailx (minimalistic), s-nail (feature rich) or what your else prefer.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Robie Basak (racb)]

It's the nature of a binary distribution like Debian and Ubuntu that dynamically linked things pull in dependencies to provide those dynamic libraries even if you don't want them yourself. Removing the dependency would require a rebuild from source or a patch to the code that pulls it in to use dlopen(3) or similar instead. However that's not within the normal design scope of anything in our ecosystem, so I don't think it's realistic to expect that.

If you want a system that really doesn't dynamically link anything you don't want, then you want a distribution that is designed to be rebuilt from source by users, not Debian or Ubuntu.

Pulling in the dependency should be harmless apart from some small disk space usage. If it is not, then please file a bug with specifics about that.

Since there are no plans to fix this in Ubuntu because what you describe is a fundamental nature of a binary distribution's design, I'm marking this bug Won't Fix to make that clear.

[Robie Basak (racb)]

> the mailutils can use MySQL, PostgreSQL and ODBC as SQL interface. But package (library) pulls only MySQL client. It's strange, why mailutils does depend only on MySQL client? Why is such discrimination?

It isn't pulling in the MySQL client. It depends on a MySQL client library. It also depends on a SQLite protocol library. The list of libraries it depends on is quite large, as is common with most packages. You're just not seeing the full list because you have much of it installed already.