Re: [libvirt PATCH] spec: libvirt-daemon: Add optional dependency on *-client

On Fri, Nov 04, 2022 at 10:09:31AM -0600, Jim Fehlig wrote: > On 11/4/22 09:22, Martin Kletzander wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 03, 2022 at 05:24:18PM +0100, Jiri Denemark wrote: > > > The libvirt-daemon subpackage contains libvirt-guests.sh script (used by > > > libvirt-guests service), which requires virsh to actually work. But > > > since dynamic libraries were separated from libvirt-client to > > > libvirt-libs more than 6 years ago, libvirt-daemon no longer requires > > > virsh to be installed. So unless libvirt-client is explicitly installed > > > (either manually or by installing the libvirt meta package), > > > libvirt-guests will not work. > > > > > > Just adding libvirt-client as a dependency of libvirt-daemon would go > > > against the original idea behind splitting libvirt-client: users may not > > > want to install or use any client binaries on the host where the daemon > > > runs (either they just use various language bindings or access the > > > daemon remotely). To solve this we could possibly turn libvirt-daemon > > > into an empty package and separate the daemons and libvirt-guests into > > > subpackages to make sure we support both use cases, but marking > > > libvirt-client as Recommended for libvirt-daemon does the same job in a > > > much simpler way. > > > > Or you could just move the libvirt-guests files to libvirt-client > > package since they couldn't work without it anyway. > > This actually seems like a better approach, especially in the context of modular > daemons. Unfortunately, now that I think about it, that would have to be dealt with a little bit more so that people don't see the libvirt-guests being removed. Using "Provides" would not help, but in the combination with the Recommends it could, theoretically work. I'll let Jiri think about it because he had a bunch of ideas and reasoning behind this decision.