excessive dependencies on links2

[dgandhi]

Binary package hint: links2

links2 has many GUI front ends, and that's all well and good, but that does not mean I NEED to install all the facilities to run all of them. Specifically when attempting to install on a system which does not have X11 installed the libx11-6 dependency causes the entire X11 code base to be installed, that is excessive.

Considering that one of the best reasons to install this package is because it provides a graphical browser without X, requiring me to install X rather defeats the purpose.

Since just about everything which runs under X11 requires libx11-6, why not just make it a dependency of x11-common, and then not have to worry about it for apps with alternate front ends?

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

Just use the links package instead of links2 which has very few dependencies but is built from the same source.

[dgandhi (dgandhi)]

While there are lots of nice text-based browsers, they do not provide an SVGA GUI, links2 does. With the packages as built, I need to install X11 in order to install links2...at which point I have no need for the SVGA functionality. I suggest that this package either have task style packages for svga/x11/text, and the base package only recommend the libraries, so that one need not install X11 to use SVGA.

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

Ok, so in your view, links has too few dependencies and links2 too many dependencies?

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

This is more or less the same request as http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=322995, just with different proposed solutions.