openjdk-7-jre-headless depends on undesirable packages

[ben thielsen]

hi-

i see that both libcups2 and libpcsclite1 are marked as dependencies. i'm using openjdk-7-jre-headless on a computer that is not involved in any way with printing or cups, nor with pc/sc or any smart card services, and would not to not be forced to install these packages.

thanks
-ben

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

the 40k pc/sc library doesn't hurt. libcups2 installs few more libraries, but nothing more. if you are concerned with disk space, then maybe use something different than java.

[ben thielsen (btb-bitrate)]

it's really not so much a question of if it hurts, or how much disk space is needed. it's simply unnecessary. why not just mark the packages as recommended - especially since for some time now recommended packages are being installed by default. that way, under default circumstances the packages will still be there, yet people who prefer otherwise can be accommodated as well.

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

because you won't answer all the questions why printing and pc/sc isn't working out of the box, if the recommends are not installed.

fine, if you can come up with a solution which prints a message before the traceback that some packages need to be installed when they are used. awaiting your patch then.

[ben thielsen (btb-bitrate)]

the only scenario in which recommended packages are not installed is if they have deliberately been disabled, in which case surely the admin is intelligent enough to install the package if needed. for the other 99.99% of cases, there will be no issue, as recommended packages will be installed, and thus both of these packages will have been installed.

[RedShift (redshift-gmx)]

As per Debian Policy Manual, "The Depends field should be used if the depended-on package is required for the depending package to provide a significant amount of functionality.", while "the Recommends field should list packages that would be found together with this one in all but unusual installations.". It seems clear to me that these packages should be moved to the Recommends field.

[HRJ (harshad-rj)]

The policies here are a little vague.

> because you won't answer all the questions why printing and pc/sc isn't working out of the box, if the recommends are not installed.

But that is true for any recommended dependency in any package.

> "The Depends field should be used if the depended-on package is required for the depending package to provide a significant amount of functionality.

This is also vague, especially for a large package like the JRE.

I think it should be a little more objective; if there is a graceful degradation then the dependencies should go into recommended. If it's going to hard-crash, then it should be essential.