Recommend libapache2-mod-php instead of apache2

[William Desportes]

[ Impact ]

phpmyadmin does not work out of the box upon installation. It currently requires users to install libapache2-mod-php and restart apache2 so phpmyadmin starts working properly.

[ Test Plan ]

From a fresh Ubuntu installation:
   - Install phpmyadmin with "apt install phpmyadmin"
   - browse to http://localhost/phpmyadmin
   - At this point, you should be looking at a blank page. If you inspect the page source, you will see that apache2 is serving raw php code. This is because the apache2 php mod is not installed. You could workaround the issue by simply installing it and restarting apache2.
   - Repeat all the steps, now using a package with. the proposed fix. When you navigate to http://localhost/phpmyadmin for the first time, you should the the phpmyadmin login page, no additional steps needed.

[ Where problems could occur ]

If libapache2-mod-php8.1 stops recommending apache2 for some reason, then a regression would occur (installing phpmyadmin would no longer get it up and running). We could go around this by also recommending apache2 here, but it does not seem to be necessary (dropping the recommends from libapache2-mod-php8.1 would likely cause regressions in [many?] other packages).

[ Other Info ]

There are several places around with users asking why apache2 returns PHP code upon phpmyadmin installation. This should address the issue for those users.

This change is already applied from lunar on.

See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/phpmyadmin/+bug/2013402

[William Desportes (williamdes)]

Fix is planned to be applied at Debian, already applied on phpsysinfo

[Athos Ribeiro (athos-ribeiro)]

Hi William,

I moved that target to fix released to reflect the fact that this has been fixed in devel (mantic). I then add tasks for kinetic and jammy so we can track the SRUs. Do we still need any work in devel (mantic) to consider it complete there?

[William Desportes (williamdes)]

Hi Athos,

> I moved that target to fix released to reflect the fact that this has been fixed in devel (mantic).

As far as I can see the mantic version is "4:5.2.1+dfsg-1" currently.
So for this version my comment: #1 applies.
Else if the SRU is applied, then yes it is released ;)

> I then add tasks for kinetic and jammy so we can track the SRUs. Do we still need any work in devel (mantic) to consider it complete there?

Only the SRU fix.
Can you add mantic so the next Ubuntu version remains unfixed ?
Because I still have to upstream this in Debian :)

[Athos Ribeiro (athos-ribeiro)]

Oh, I get it.

So, we are tracking 4 tasks above:

- phpmyadmin (Debian)
- phpmyadmin (ubuntu)
- jammy
- kinetic

We use the "phpmyadmin (ubuntu)" to refer to devel, in this case, mantic. I see the patch is already applied in mantic. That is why I moved that specific task to fix released (meaning it is already available in mantic, even if mantic is not released yet).

Does this make sense? I see the patch in manyic already recommends the apache2 mod, so I am setting the mantic (devel) task back to fix released. If I am wrong on my assessment, please do set it back to in progress again so we can apply any further fixes to mantic too!

[William Desportes (williamdes)]

Thanks, I was wrong about my statement. After checking it's already applied in Debian.
Ref: https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/phpmyadmin/tree/debian/control?h=applied/ubuntu/mantic-devel#n69

So mantic already has it, yay !

[William Desportes (williamdes)]

https://salsa.debian.org/phpmyadmin-team/phpmyadmin/-/blob/debian/latest/debian/control

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Recommends: libapache2-mod-php | lighttpd | httpd,

recommending libapache2-mod-php makes sense. Recommending libapache2-mod-php with other *web servers* as alternatives does not make sense. If the user already has nginx or lighttpd installed, and installs phpmyadmin, this will not pull php support in for those users and they will have the same problem on a different web server.

Rejecting this upload as the fix is incomplete. If we're going to SRU, we should fix the Recommends all at once.

Also, I see that this partial issue is still present in lunar.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

An upload of phpmyadmin to kinetic-proposed has been rejected from the upload queue for the following reason: "incomplete Recommends fix (LP: #2016017)".

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

An upload of phpmyadmin to jammy-proposed has been rejected from the upload queue for the following reason: "incomplete Recommends fix (LP: #2016017)".

[William Desportes (williamdes)]

Hi Steve, what you said is true for other webservers.
But I think it's kind of non of our business. That said if you find a syntax that makes deb able to recommend nginx with php fpm that would be great.
Until then I found none that could work

[William Desportes (williamdes)]

> recommending libapache2-mod-php makes sense. Recommending libapache2-mod-php with other *web servers* as alternatives does not make sense. If the user already has nginx or lighttpd installed, and installs phpmyadmin, this will not pull php support in for those users and they will have the same problem on a different web server.

This makes sense, if the user has nginx it works as expected, it's up to the user to do their config.
Same for other web servers, I give the user the choice to do what they want :)

Closing this as it already reached Ubuntu and Debian. Since this is rejected, I will drop it from the SRU patch, users can deal with it until they are up to date.