[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#1064040: src:gnupg2: Please remove Recommends: gnupg from all binary packages

[Julian Andres Klode]

On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 11:19:33AM +0100, Julian Andres Klode wrote:
> Control: tag -1 patch
> 
> On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 10:42:35AM +0100, Julian Andres Klode wrote:
> > Source: gnupg2
> > Severity: normal
> > X-Debbugs-Cc: juliank at ubuntu.com
> > 
> > gnupg is a big meta package pulling in all sorts of weird stuff
> > people don't want by default on their machine, like a wks server.
> > 
> > That wks server in experimental now pulls in a mail transport
> > agent.
> > 
> > Hence installing gpg for example pulls in gnupg by Recommends,
> > and then the wks server and then the mail transport agent. Ugh.
> > 
> > It stands to reason that gnupg2 should have:
> > 
> > 1. gnupg should move to the metapackages section
> > 2. All Recommends on gnupg should be removed, we don't want that
> >    installed by default.
> > 3. gpg should Recommends keyboxd and dirmngr as they will frequently be
> >    needed when using gpg
> > 
> > And then we should clean up all reverse dependencies to say gpg.
> > 
> > I think I plan to do this in Ubuntu. The alternative would be
> > to demote all non-interesting gnupg dependencies to suggests,
> > those would be:
> > 
> > - gnupg-utils
> > - gpg-wks-server
> > - gpgv [stuff will depend on that anyway if it needs it, like apt does]
> > - maybe gpg-wks-client
> > 
> > This may make the gnupg package *actually useful* rather than
> > be a pointless metapackage that nobody actually wants to install.
> > 
> > Let me know what you think but this surely is a mess
> > we need to sort out, and I have about ~ next week to
> > do so downstream.
> 
> Implemented in
> https://salsa.debian.org/debian/gnupg2/-/merge_requests/13
> 
> as just uploaded to Ubuntu.

Also note MR 14, which fixes the autopkgtests for 2.4.

My intention is to also change other packages' Depends and Recommends on
gnupg to generally say gpg instead, but not in the next weeks, but like
after Ubuntu has import stop as I don't want to do that in 24.04 cycle.

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