Kate installation tries to pull 1515 new packages.

Hi all,

Would i be correct assuming that this is right (sub)forum for questions about factory?
Well, ok, then…
Just today installed Factory, very pleasing experience overall. Snapshot i installed from is dated to 2014-09-01, latest, i think, and it’s based on upcoming 13.2. Installer got remake, not overhaul, i guess, but enough to make it feel very modern…
But anyway, i’m here not to praise Factory distro, which it really deserves, but to ask about my favorite text editor - kate. Like many of you first thing i do on fresh system i start installing my favorite applications and one of those is kate. But as soon as i ran “zypper in kate” i got confronted with very large list of to be installed packages (dependencies) - 1515 packages, to be exact :O. With overall download size of 689.4 MiB and additional 1.2 GiB to be used disk space. Majority of those (99%) are texlive-* packages, but also very strange ones like inkscape :?
That’s can’t be right…
Could anyone confirm this?

What happens if you “ban” texlive from being installed; zypper al texlive and then try to install kate?

I don’t have factory in front of me right now, due to circumstances, but it might be worth a shot - there’s clearly a dependency issue somewhere.

Yes.

Well, ok, then…
Just today installed Factory, very pleasing experience overall. Snapshot i installed from is dated to 2014-09-01, latest, i think, and it’s based on upcoming 13.2. Installer got remake, not overhaul, i guess, but enough to make it feel very modern…
But anyway, i’m here not to praise Factory distro, which it really deserves, but to ask about my favorite text editor - kate. Like many of you first thing i do on fresh system i start installing my favorite applications and one of those is kate. But as soon as i ran “zypper in kate” i got confronted with very large list of to be installed packages (dependencies) - 1515 packages, to be exact :O. With overall download size of 689.4 MiB and additional 1.2 GiB to be used disk space. Majority of those (99%) are texlive-* packages, but also very strange ones like inkscape :?
That’s can’t be right…
Could anyone confirm this?

See: Factory keeps trying to install texlive on zypper dup - Install/Boot/Login - openSUSE Forums

I also explained there why the installation of kate pulls in texlive.
Use “–no-recommends” to prevent that, set “solver.onlyRequires=true” in /etc/zypp/zypp.conf, or unselect/taboo/lock one of the packages in the chain e.g. kate-python-plugins, IPython, python-matplotlib, or texlive.
Those are all only recommended, not required.

Miuku wrote:

>
> What happens if you “ban” texlive from being installed; zypper al
> texlive and then try to install kate?
>

I set texlive to ‘taboo’ and that cut the install list down to one set of
icons.

thnx wolfi323 for link to another thread regarding this issue… it made clear why kate was pulling so many texlive recommends. Eventually doing “zypper in --no-recommends kate” did what i was aiming to do - install kate with it’s directly necessary dependency kate-python-plugins.
Although i do understand why, i still do think that this is more of a bug then trivial way of working. I shouldn’t, as user, be telling zypper (or yast) to avoid further recommends then this or other package directly needs to have (hard dependency). I think it should be happening automatically, especially considering the fact that it always have been this way - i never had to install kate and direct zypper to ignore recommends - 1515 of them :). Even core KDE doesn’t have that many packages as recommends :).
Anyway, thnx for answers guys.

As I wrote in the other thread yesterday, there has been a change on Friday already, so kate should not pull in texlive any more.
So bug or not, it should be fixed already.
It will still take a few days until that change enters Factory though of course.

I shouldn’t, as user, be telling zypper (or yast) to avoid further recommends then this or other package directly needs to have (hard dependency). I think it should be happening automatically, especially considering the fact that it always have been this way

That’s wrong, especially the last sub-sentence.
Recommended packages were always installed by default.

You always had to tell zypper explicitely (or change the config) to not install them automatically.
That’s the point of being recommended. But you can prevent them from being installed, because they are not required.

And there is the config option “solver.onlyRequires”, that can be set to true to only install hard dependencies automatically.

  • i never had to install kate and direct zypper to ignore recommends - 1515 of them :).

That’s because that kate-python-plugins package is new. Its content was inside the standard kate package before 4.14, and it now got split out.

It’s that kate-plugins-python package that recommends IPython, which in turn recommends python-matplotlib, which in turn recommends texlive.

The previous (<4.14) kate package did not recommend IPython (this has been added to the plugin package when it was split out), that’s why you didn’t get those 1515 packages pulled in before…
But again, this has been changed already on Friday, the change should be in Factory soon.

Well… no really wrong, and, yes, i do understand your remark over “sub-sentence” - we cannot keep saying “it was working differently then” - things change and that’s good thing… if they change for better and not for the worst, like in this case. And apparently many more agree otherwise “fix” wouldn’t be coming into the upstream.

Well, i don’t know, i clearly remember zypper telling me in the past (oh, this “past” remark again) - “this will be installed, these dependencies will be installed and these recommended packages, but they will not be installed”. Actually i always wondered - if they are recommended why the hell they are not being installed???.. but hey, it was very long sins last time i used openSuse, i could be wrong.

Actually point of “required” would be to get installed automaticvally, point of “recommended” would be , well, just that… But then again, it could be different way of doing things at “green lizard” camp, so i am open for new things… :slight_smile:

This shows how little i know about openSuse… coming from fedora (well, i never actually left fedora :slight_smile: but anyway) kate-python-plugins is standard dependency for kate there.

I got this… it was clear already very first time you mentioned this :wink:

Well, your sentence was wrong. I didn’t mean to value your statement regarding whether kate should pull in 1500 packages or not, but you really got the facts wrong.
It didn’t work differently then. There has been no change in the way zypper behaves, at least not recently.

I have to admit though, that I don’t remember really any more how recommended packages were handled five years ago.
But I just had a look, and even openSUSE 11.0 (from 2008!) already had the “solver.onlyRequires” option with “false” as default.
So what past are you talking about?

And zypper’s behavior hasn’t been changed now either (it is configurable anyway). Just the dependencies for this particular case, so that installing kate doesn’t automatically pull in >1500 packages as recommends for everybody.

Well, i don’t know, i clearly remember zypper telling me in the past (oh, this “past” remark again) - “this will be installed, these dependencies will be installed and these recommended packages, but they will not be installed”. Actually i always wondered - if they are recommended why the hell they are not being installed???.. but hey, it was very long sins last time i used openSuse, i could be wrong.

You remember wrong, or confuse it with something else.

If that’s what you mean: zypper says “The following xxx package updates will NOT be installed:” for packages that have a higher version in a different repo, but that’s because of vendor stickiness and nothing to do with recommends.

Actually point of “required” would be to get installed automaticvally, point of “recommended” would be , well, just that… But then again, it could be different way of doing things at “green lizard” camp, so i am open for new things… :slight_smile:

No, the point of “required” is that you cannot prevent it from being installed.
“recommended” means it should be installed, but you can override it.
Actually that’s an rpm feature though, but rpm doesn’t select any packages to be installed anyway.

This shows how little i know about openSuse… coming from fedora (well, i never actually left fedora :slight_smile: but anyway) kate-python-plugins is standard dependency for kate there.

I, on the other hand know nothing about Fedora.
But you cannot really compare those things anyway. There is no “right” way to split up the packages, and everything else would be wrong.

I got this… it was clear already very first time you mentioned this :wink:

Ok. :wink:

Wrong, you can and you should, how else you could get perspective? You always should take step back from your doings and take a look around, what and how others are doing. Share your experience with them and keep open mind for something new. If not this urge i wouldn’t come back to openSuse (after brief encounter, which was way before 2005 btw, version 8 or 9?) and wouldn’t have learned about zypper quirks. Which to me they seem quite illogical - hard dependencies (required) are installed, recommended are, as definition of the word implies, - optional, so my surprise was to see that i had to opt-out of recommended packages - way of working i disliked - and i found out that because i was comparing workings of zypper to yum (not like that bugger is perfect).

P.S. I expressed my own view on zypper to stress on importance of “comparing” and not to start discussion on package managers.

Still, there is no wrong or right here.
Just because Fedora splits the packages like they do and have package requirements like they do, doesn’t mean that openSUSE has to do the same in the same way.

Again, if those package will not be installed, other people then might complain that the package they freshly installed does not fully work because dependencies are missing.

which was way before 2005 btw, version 8 or 9?)

Back then zypper did not exist yet.
But this has to have been SUSE 8 or 9 then I suppose, yes.

which to me they seem quite illogical - hard dependencies (required) are installed, recommended are, as definition of the word implies, - optional,

I would rather say: “recommended” are, as definition of the word implies, optional, but should be installed.

Recommends are optional, you do not have to install them. And you can uninstall them, whereas you cannot uninstall required packages.
But they are installed by default, at least with the default settings.

What you mean are “suggested” packages, those are not installed by default.

And again, zypper installs recommends by default since 5 years at least, so I see no point in this discussion here now anyway.
There was a wrong dependency in one package, and that got fixed, so that’s it for me here now.

If you think that zypper’s behavior is wrong and should be changed, then please file a bug report.