On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 6:54 AM, James Hogarth <james.hogarth(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 18 May 2017 at 11:03, Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 1:31 AM, James Hogarth <james.hogarth(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 17 May 2017 8:24 pm, "Tom Hughes" <tom(a)compton.nu> wrote:
>>
>> On 17/05/17 20:15, Chris Adams wrote:
>>>
>>> Once upon a time, Ian Pilcher <arequipeno(a)gmail.com> said:
>>>>
>>>> Removing RPM dependencies on the net-tools package and deciding whether
>>>> it should be installed by default are two separate (albeit related)
>>>> discussions.
>>>
>>>
>>> The subject of the thread here is "deprecated", which implies
removing
>>> the package, not just reducing dependencies.
>>
>>
>> Well normally deprecated refers to something which is left in place but
>> which people are advised to move away from which would imply not removing
>> it.
>>
>> I suspect it will be some time before all those packages are modified to not
>> rely on it so any talk of removing it seems premature.
>
> It's not just packages with explicitly published dependencies. It's a
> lot of configuration tools with implicit dependencies, whose authors
> didn't imagine at the time of authorship that basic utilities like
> "/sbin/ifconfig". These tools may be entirely local and outside of
> RPM's, or may never have bothered to declare what they thought was an
> implicit provision as part of running on an RPM based Linux. For
> example, I note on the older systems I have immediate access to that
> ifconfig is used in the python "virtinst" and "uuid" modules.
> _______________________________________________
That's fine Nico, and I'll remind you I'm not in any way proposing
removal of net-tools from the repositories.
Cool. "Deprecated" can often imply that the toolkit is due to be
removed, so I personally just wanted to point out some specific,
hidden dependencies that may not be apparent from a casual RPM
analysis.
Also looking at older systems isn't relevant as this is just
about
looking forward with Fedora.
Again do keep in mind that the default RHEL7 server install, a minimal
Fedora install and the upcoming Debian Stretch has no net-tools by
default.
I see your point. I'm not saying pulling out net-tools dependencies is
unreasonable: I'm suggesting that there may be an unexpected
consequence in components with unannounced dependencies, such as the
python "uuid" module.