[pkg-wpa-devel] Bug#612715: Bug#612715: wpasupplicant: Remove dep to libpcsclite1

Stefan Lippers-Hollmann s.L-H at gmx.de
Fri Feb 11 00:33:08 UTC 2011


Hi

On Friday 11 February 2011, Sven Joachim wrote:
> On 2011-02-10 08:15 +0100, Salvo Tomaselli wrote:
> 
> > Package: wpasupplicant
> > Version: 0.6.10-2.1
> > Severity: normal
> >
> > Greetings,
> >
> > I can't understand why wpasupplicant should depend on a library
> > to use smart card readers.
> > If in some very very rare configurations that is used, then it
> > could be suggested or recommended but since wpasupplicant works
> > without this library, it should not depend on it.
> >
> >> The Depends field should be used if the depended-on package is required for
> >> the depending package to provide a significant amount of functionality.
> > http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html
> >
> >
> > Also i think it can be very confusing for non so expert users
> > to be prompted a question asking to which serial port the reader
> > is plugged and a selection allowing ttyS* to be chosen, when they have
> > no smart card reader and no clue what apt is talking about.
> 
> For those who don't understand this sentence, libpcsclite1 in sid now
> depends on pcscd (which in turn depends on the not-so-welcome hal).
> This is the real problem IMO; I don't care about small library packages
> as long as they don't drag in random daemons.

After a short coordination with Kel, we've decided to disable PCSC in
the next wpasupplicant upload, which allows to drop the dependency on
libpcsclite1 and therefore indirectly on hal. Of course the better 
solution would be to dlopen() it, but smartcard support through the
PC/SC-Daemon appears to be rare enough to disable it, until anyone
really cares enough about PC/SC to implement it that way.

I've committed the according changes to the packaging Vcs (pkg-wpa, 
svnr1570) and it will take effect with the next wpasupplicant upload 
(no hard ETA, yet).

Regards
	Stefan Lippers-Hollmann





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