reflum, On Tue, 2012-05-29 at 12:28 +0200, Helge Hafting wrote: > Package: libroar2 > Severity: wishlist > > Dear Maintainer, > > I installed a game that uses libroar2. And libroar2 pulls in > libdnet and dnet-common, so on every boot I get messages about > DECnet not being set up. (And some cpu time and bootup time gets > wasted). I have no plans of ever using any DECnet support, and I believe > that is the case for the vast majority of other users too. > > Don't misunderstand, I think it is nice that "sound via DECnet" > is supported - possibly very useful for those who actually use DECnet. > > But it'd be nice if this support was optional, so that no decnet > stuff will be _needed_ in order to use libroar2. It is fine that > libroar2 will use DECnet _if it is there_, but it'd be nice > if the package could be installable and useable without DECnet. > That would avoid bloating the machine with never-used stuff.
Thank you for your kind report. In fact you are the first person asking for this in a kind way. Here is some background: libdnet includes runtime for DECnet. This is what is included in the standard C runtime for IP (glibc). Because of a lot people being ideots this never made it's way into the standard runtine for GNU/Linux which would be the right way. In fact to make everything worse they added conflicting functions to glibc. This requires some tricks to write programs supporting DECnet which also use the normal system interfaces. libdnet mostly contains stuff like node name lookup (like DNS functions for IP). Nothing causing harm by itself. Because of this above we need to link it and have it as depends. If we downgrade the depends to a recommends or suggests programs using libroar will not load at all anymore (dynamic linker will fail with 'library not found'). dnet-common is the package doing the configuration. It is recommended by libdnet (which seems to be changed currently, down to suggests). It can safely be removed. For example using 'apt-get remove --purge dnet-common'. (The purge is optional, see apt's manpage for more details). If installed but not configured it will just print the infos you have seen at boot and do nothing else. Even if configured the used CPU time and RAM is below what I was abled to messure. It seems it uses ~8KB of kernel memory after boot (of cause only if configured!). Much less than what is used by IP support. So, don't panic, just remove dnet-common and also those boot messages should be gone. If you have any questions feel free to ask and/or reasign this report to libdnet/dnet-common. If you don't I will close this report in a few days. Thanks again for taking your time to write this ticket. Hope I was of help. -- Philipp. (Rah of PH2)
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