Bug#887236: xen-tools should depend on e2fsprogs explicitly

[Andreas Henriksson]

Hello Axel Beckert,

Thanks for your feedback!

On Mon, Jan 22, 2018 at 10:52:09PM +0100, Axel Beckert wrote:
> Control: severity -1 important
> Control: retitle -1 xen-tools: should recommend e2fsprogs
> 
> Hi Andreas and Helmut.
> 
> Helmut: Thanks for the bug report!
> 
> Andreas Henriksson wrote:
> > Control: severity -1 minor
> 
> I don't see why a missing package relation should be minor. Until
> e2fsprogs isn't non-essential, it's at least not "serious".
[...]

>From my point of view given that e2fsprogs now and also in the future
will be part of every normal installation, the only thing that makes any
difference if there's a missing *dependency* relationship. When the
relationship should rather be Recommends or Suggests it might be seen
as better to be explicit about that thus the minor severity. The
change would be mostly theoretical and informational.

(You might be right that ext* is worthy of a special bump to Recommends.)

Ofcourse, seeing the bug report fixed would be much better than arguing
over its severity though Hopefully now that we've discussed all this
we can see the change swiftly uploaded.

Regards,
Andreas Henriksson

Bug#887236: xen-tools should depend on e2fsprogs explicitly

[Axel Beckert]

Control: severity -1 important
Control: retitle -1 xen-tools: should recommend e2fsprogs

Hi Andreas and Helmut.

Helmut: Thanks for the bug report!

Andreas Henriksson wrote:
> Control: severity -1 minor

I don't see why a missing package relation should be minor. Until
e2fsprogs isn't non-essential, it's at least not "serious".

> The ChangeLog mentions these tools added as 'optional', so likely
> a dependency is not the right thing here.

Indeed. It's not necessary in _all_ cases and hence a hard dependency
is too strict.

> Right next to the mkfs.ext* commands we find the reiserfs and xfs
> equivalents, and reiserfsprogs and xfsprogs are listed under
> Suggests relationship.

There's a difference nevertheless: ext3/ext4 are the default file
systems used by xen-tools. So the according tools should be pulled in
by default, too.

> My conclusion is thus that adding e2fsprogs to Suggests seem to be
> the proper fix.

Due to being the default file system, it should be "Recommends".

Regards, Axel
-- 
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Bug#887236: xen-tools should depend on e2fsprogs explicitly

[Andreas Henriksson]

Control: severity -1 minor
Control: retitle -1 xen-tools should also suggest e2fsprogs

On Sun, Jan 14, 2018 at 08:12:31PM +0100, Helmut Grohne wrote:
> Package: xen-tools
[...]
> /usr/bin/xen-create-image contains mkfs.ext2, mkfs.ext3 and mkfs.ext4. 
> According to file it is a Perl script text executable
[...]

The ChangeLog mentions these tools added as 'optional', so likely
a dependency is not the right thing here.
Right next to the mkfs.ext* commands we find the reiserfs and xfs
equivalents, and reiserfsprogs and xfsprogs are listed under
Suggests relationship.

My conclusion is thus that adding e2fsprogs to Suggests seem to be
the proper fix.

Regards,
Andreas Henriksson