Bug#869744: libxml2: please drop Recommends: xml-core

[Adam Borowski]

Source: libxml2
Version: 2.9.4+dfsg1-3
Severity: wishlist

Hi!
This recommends unnecessarily pulls in xml-core on the vast majority of
Debian installs. It doesn't seem to be doing anything good -- programs
that actually need xml-core need to Depend on it anyway, and for the
rest, it's just a waste.

While xml-core is a small package -- together with its dependency sgml-base
they take just 191KB, it's a low-hanging fruit that would allow trimming that
much from most installs with an one-line change.



Meow!
-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
APT prefers unstable-debug
APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (150, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.13.0-rc2-debug-00025-g7c422cf6b36d (SMP w/6 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

[Mattia Rizzolo]

Control: tag -1 pending

Post by Adam Borowski
This recommends unnecessarily pulls in xml-core on the vast majority of
Debian installs. It doesn't seem to be doing anything good -- programs
that actually need xml-core need to Depend on it anyway, and for the
rest, it's just a waste.
While xml-core is a small package -- together with its dependency sgml-base
they take just 191KB, it's a low-hanging fruit that would allow trimming that
much from most installs with an one-line change.

Agreed.
https://anonscm.debian.org/git/debian-xml-sgml/libxml2.git/commit/?id=003a8f818f5159ae1287593d2646e0bef3e616ab