Bug#1085010: lintian: make appstream optional

[Philippe Cerfon]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.119.0
Severity: wishlist

Hi.

May I kindly ask to consider whether it would be possible to have the
appstream package only as an optional dependency?

If installed it also enables integration with apt, which one may or
may not want.

Maybe it could be made a recommended or suggested package, which
lintian erroring out in case it would actually be needed because some
appstream metadata is present in the package to be checked?
Any/pr maybe this being allowed to somehow overridden?

Thanks,
Philippe.

[Louis-Philippe Véronneau]

Post by Philippe Cerfon
Package: lintian
Version: 2.119.0
Severity: wishlist
Hi.
May I kindly ask to consider whether it would be possible to have the
appstream package only as an optional dependency?
If installed it also enables integration with apt, which one may or
may not want.
Maybe it could be made a recommended or suggested package, which
lintian erroring out in case it would actually be needed because some
appstream metadata is present in the package to be checked?
Any/pr maybe this being allowed to somehow overridden?
Thanks,
Philippe.

Hi,

I'm not sure not issuing tags based on the presence of optional
dependencies is a good idea. I think it would lead to confusion and
output reproducibility problems.

Lintian itself doesn't need to be installed on a dev's system directly
and a clean build system often doesn't include Lintian itself.

What kind of issues having appstream installed on a system creates?

[Philippe Cerfon]

Hi.

On Thu, Oct 17, 2024 at 3:53 PM Louis-Philippe Véronneau

Post by Louis-Philippe Véronneau
I'm not sure not issuing tags based on the presence of optional
dependencies is a good idea. I think it would lead to confusion and
output reproducibility problems.

Would that still be a problem if lintian would just exit with a
general error in case appstream was about to be invoked but not
present?
Debian does something like that already with program in the devscripts
package, where many of them depend on packages which devscripts only
recommends.

So if someone actually wants to check a package with lintian that
makes use of appstream metadata and if appstream is not installed,
lintian could just generally fail before doing any further checks.
That should make things reproducible, I guess.

But people which don't use appstream in their packages could then
still install and use lintan without appstream.

Post by Louis-Philippe Véronneau
Lintian itself doesn't need to be installed on a dev's system directly

Sure, but it's quite handy. Not only for DDs but also people who
package stuff that never makes it into Debian.

Post by Louis-Philippe Véronneau
What kind of issues having appstream installed on a system creates?

I'm generally rather skeptical about systems like
flatpack/snap/appimage that substitute/circumvent Debian’s true
package management system (APT/dpkg). Sure appstream is mostly about
metadata, but it seems conceptually related to the former.
In the end, APT/dpkg work without appstream just fine, so ideally
there should be no need to install it.

Regards,
Philippe.