Idea #10058: Don't install unnecessary packages with application

Written by mb the 19 Jun 08 at 16:30. Category: System.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

I have Kubuntu. Today I tried to install Deluge from the official Ubuntu repository. Apt said that it needs to download 65 (!) different packages. Among them there were some totally unrelated packages like gstreamer, gnome-media and gnome libraries (much of them).

When I downloaded .deb file from official Deluge site, it said that it requires only 6 additional libraries. Not 65!

So I think that Ubuntu should check current dependences and eliminate the unnecessary ones. Otherwise we will all end up with packages that we don't really need.

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pek wrote on the 19 Jun 08 at 17:28

Uhm...Not sure if this is the case, but, did you check whether those 6 dependencies had other 6 dependencies each? And then those other dependencies had other dependencies..? And then.....Well, you get the picture... ;)

mb wrote on the 19 Jun 08 at 18:28

Ubuntu's version has a lot of dependencies. I don't know why. And I also can't understand why it wants to install gnome libraries. It just doesn't make sense. And I've noticed similar behavior when I was trying to install GIMP too...
Yeah, I know that Ubuntu is GNOME-based. But there are also Kubuntu, Xubuntu and others! If I would want to install GNOME, I would have chosen Ubuntu (not Kubuntu) in the first place!

pek wrote on the 19 Jun 08 at 19:06

Well, Ubuntu, as opposed to SuSE, is on a CD, and a lot of the libraries SuSE has default must be installed in Ubuntu (and I mean a LOT!). So it's only natural that the first time you will add something it will have to install a lot of dependencies. This will gradually fade out as more libraries are already installed.

Also, a lot of applications can be run under Gnome even though they were for KDE (at least in SuSE I could do that). So I'm guessing that the same things apply in KDE for Gnome applications. So logically, to install a Gnome application you have to have gnome.

mb wrote on the 19 Jun 08 at 19:18

But it seems that for Ubuntu devs GTK app=Gnome app. Which obviously isn't true.

mb wrote on the 19 Jun 08 at 19:24

But it seems that for Ubuntu devs Gtk app=Gnome app. Which obviously isn't true.
GTK apps can live without gnome libraries.

drsaamah wrote on the 19 Jun 08 at 21:58

I've had issues such as this before, but in all honesty, this is a small negative to an otherwise good thing. Ubuntu is designed to be as idiot-proof as linux can get, and apt-get is a HUGE step in that direction. At times it may remove things and install things that we don't want it too, but most of the time it does these things when they need to be done and when new-to-linux users don't know they need to be done (or even how to it). If these extra "dependencies" are such a huge issue, find the archive for the program and make install the application yourself instead of using apt-get.

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