Bug#699788: Recommends on libwebkitgtk-1.0-0 drags in a huge list of dependencies

[Michael Biebl]

Package: libproxy0
Version: 0.3.1-5.1
Severity: important

There is a feature request in network-manager to enable the connectivity
checking support [1]. This feature uses libsoup. I've tested what
installing libsoup2.4-1 will mean with regard to additional
dependencies. Unfortunately, the list is huge. The dependency chain goes
like this:
libsoup2.4-1 → glib-networking → libproxy0 → libwebkitgtk-1.0-0 (recommends)
libwebkitgtk-1.0-0 drags in a lot of dependencies, especially via its
recommends on various gstreamer packages (which should probably be filed
as a separate bug. As a simple comparison in a pristine chroot:

# apt-get install libmozjs10d
...
0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1184 kB/1349 kB of archives.
After this operation, 4054 kB of additional disk space will be used.

# apt-get install libwebkitgtk-1.0-0
0 upgraded, 244 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 66.5 MB/148 MB of archives.
After this operation, 424 MB of additional disk space will be used.

It basically pulls in half of the GNOME stack, which makes enabling the
connectivity check in NM basically impossible.

Since porting libsoup away from libproxy (which is probably the best
option) requires probably quite a bit of effort and work, I was
wondering if we could as an intermediate solution either
a/ demote the recommends in libproxy to suggests
b/ swap the recommends from ${webkit:Recommends} | ${moz:Recommends} to
   ${moz:Recommends} |${webkit:Recommends}

Michael
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=691790
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (200, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.utf8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages libproxy0 depends on:
ii  libc6              2.13-38
ii  multiarch-support  2.13-38

Versions of packages libproxy0 recommends:
ii  libmozjs10d         10.0.12esr-1
ii  libwebkitgtk-1.0-0  1.8.1-3.3

libproxy0 suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information