Comment 6 for bug 270512

This is still an issue with xenial.

The problem this causes is that on an Ubuntu Server system, installing any package which depends on openssh-client will also pull in pretty much the whole X11 system. Example:

root@xenial1:~# apt-get install rancid
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  expect fontconfig-config fonts-dejavu-core libdrm-amdgpu1 libdrm-intel1 libdrm-nouveau2
  libdrm-radeon1 libfontconfig1 libfontenc1 libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libglapi-mesa libice6
  libllvm3.8 libpciaccess0 libperl4-corelibs-perl libsm6 libtcl8.6 libtk8.6 libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0
  libx11-xcb1 libxaw7 libxcb-dri2-0 libxcb-dri3-0 libxcb-glx0 libxcb-present0 libxcb-shape0
  libxcb-sync1 libxcomposite1 libxdamage1 libxfixes3 libxft2 libxi6 libxinerama1 libxmu6 libxpm4
  libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxshmfence1 libxss1 libxt6 libxtst6 libxv1 libxxf86dga1 libxxf86vm1
  tcl-expect tcl8.6 tk8.6 x11-common x11-utils xbitmaps xterm
Suggested packages:
  diffstat tcl-tclreadline mesa-utils xfonts-cyrillic
The following NEW packages will be installed
  expect fontconfig-config fonts-dejavu-core libdrm-amdgpu1 libdrm-intel1 libdrm-nouveau2
  libdrm-radeon1 libfontconfig1 libfontenc1 libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libglapi-mesa libice6
  libllvm3.8 libpciaccess0 libperl4-corelibs-perl libsm6 libtcl8.6 libtk8.6 libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0
  libx11-xcb1 libxaw7 libxcb-dri2-0 libxcb-dri3-0 libxcb-glx0 libxcb-present0 libxcb-shape0
  libxcb-sync1 libxcomposite1 libxdamage1 libxfixes3 libxft2 libxi6 libxinerama1 libxmu6 libxpm4
  libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxshmfence1 libxss1 libxt6 libxtst6 libxv1 libxxf86dga1 libxxf86vm1
  rancid tcl-expect tcl8.6 tk8.6 x11-common x11-utils xbitmaps xterm
0 to upgrade, 53 to newly install, 0 to remove and 0 not to upgrade.
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After this operation, 172 MB of additional disk space will be used.
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This is silly. But:

root@xenial1:~# apt-get install rancid --no-install-recommends
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  expect libperl4-corelibs-perl libtcl8.6 tcl-expect
Suggested packages:
  tcl8.6 diffstat
Recommended packages:
  tcl8.6 tk8.6
The following NEW packages will be installed
  expect libperl4-corelibs-perl libtcl8.6 rancid tcl-expect

That's what I expected.

It seems to me that:

* if the system you are using a client is graphical (e.g. Ubuntu desktop), then you will probably have xauth already

* if the system you are using is text-based, then you definitely don't want xauth/X11 just to have an ssh client.

So if anything "recommends" xauth, shouldn't it be X11 or the desktop environment, not the openssh client?