shp2pgsql-gui should be in a separate package

[Yuri Khan]

Version information: postgis package 1.5.2-1 and later in any of the currently released distributions up to saucy, and in the current development distribution trustry

To reproduce: sudo apt-get install postgis

Expected: No X-related libraries are proposed for installation.

Observed: All of the following otherwise unneeded libraries are installed:
fontconfig fontconfig-config hicolor-icon-theme libatk1.0-0 libatk1.0-data libavahi-client3 libavahi-common-data libavahi-common3 libcairo2 libcups2 libdatrie1 libfontconfig1 libfreetype6 libgcrypt11 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-common libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-bin libgtk2.0-common libjasper1 libjpeg-turbo8 libjpeg8 libpango1.0-0 libpixman-1-0 libthai-data libthai0 libtiff4 libxcb-render0 libxcb-shm0 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxfixes3 libxft2 libxi6 libxinerama1 libxrandr2 libxrender1 ttf-dejavu-core

The presence of shp2pgsql-gui forces postgis to depend on libgtk2.0-0 which depends on a bunch of X client libraries, which are not really welcome on any headless production database server.

shp2pgsql-gui should be packaged separately, installed only by people who really need a gui for such a task as SHAPE to PostGIS conversion.

[Bas Couwenberg (sebastic)]

If you're afraid of X libraries on your headless server, you should not install the postgis package for its utilities.

shp2pgsql-gui will not be split off into its own package.

[Mike A. Owens (mikq)]

> If you're afraid of X libraries on your headless server, [...]

As it stands, to get boring geometric functions into the PostgreSQL server, you must also get: two Postscript/PDF interpreters, a multicast DNS client library, ffmpeg AND libxine, a jpeg decoder, the PulseAudio client library, the MySQL client libraries, a font rasterizer (with fonts), an MP3 AND Ogg Vorbis encoder, the xlib and XCB client libraries, and two full widget toolkits (libqtgui4 and libgtk+).

It's 594MB of dependencies: almost the size of the Ubuntu Server ISO image. It's not like it just brings in a vestigial copy of xlib. That's a lot of new security surface area for a server. I've attached the full resolved dependency list on a clean install of Ubuntu Server 16.04 (sans postgresql-9.5).

> [...] you should not install the postgis package for its utilities.

Typically, people are installing the postgis package for the PostgreSQL server extension, not for the included its GUI shape loader utility. The source tarball will happily build the extension without building shp2pgsql-gui for this reason.

[Yuri Khan (yurivkhan)]

Well, the extension can be installed independently from the postgresql-x.x-postgis-y.y package. But it’s still ridiculous that one has to install all that if one just wants to convert shape files.

And yes, recurring automated shape to postgis conversion is a real business need.