On Sun, 14 Jul 2024 at 19:21, Simon McVittie <s...@debian.org> wrote:
> Dependency size and maintenance
> -------------------------------
>
> I also notice that the netplan.io package would bring GLib, Python,
> python3-dbus and python3-yaml into the dependencies of the base system,
> among others. As an upstream and downstream maintainer of GLib, and in
> practice the only upstream and downstream unmaintainer[1] of python3-dbus,
> I'm not comfortable with that, both for size reasons (GLib and Python
> are not small) and for quality and maintainedness reasons (python3-dbus).
>
> GLib and Python are relatively large in both on-disk size and attack
> surface, but they're essential to our desktop installations anyway,
> reinventing them in parallel would be worse than reusing them, and
> their maintainers have already accepted the responsibility of them
> being an important system component. So those two are actually not my
> main concern here, and if we had no good alternative, I'd be saying:
> yes they're relatively bulky for a container/embedded use-case, but on
> a typical server installation they're fine.
Let's put some hard numbers on the table given this is an important
detail. The following is all starting from a default debootstrapped
unstable.
With networkd only we can drop ifupdown, net changes:
REMOVING:
ifupdown
Summary:
Upgrading: 0, Installing: 0, Removing: 1, Not Upgrading: 0
Freed space: 207 kB
Using network-manager in headless mode (no GUI) brings in:
Installing:
network-manager
Installing dependencies:
ca-certificates libgudev-1.0-0 libnl-genl-3-200
libssh2-1t64
dbus libicu72 libnl-route-3-200
libteamdctl0
dbus-bin libjim0.82t64 libnm0
libusb-1.0-0
dbus-daemon libldap-2.5-0 libpam-systemd
libxml2
dbus-session-bus-common libldap-common libpcap0.8t64
modemmanager
dbus-system-bus-common libmbim-glib4 libpcsclite1
openssl
dbus-user-session libmbim-proxy
libpolkit-agent-1-0 polkitd
dns-root-data libmbim-utils libpolkit-gobject-1-0 ppp
dnsmasq-base libmm-glib0 libpsl5t64
publicsuffix
libbluetooth3 libndp0 libqmi-glib5
sgml-base
libbrotli1 libnetfilter-conntrack3 libqmi-proxy
shared-mime-info
libcurl3t64-gnutls libnfnetlink0 libqmi-utils
usb-modeswitch
libdbus-1-3 libnghttp2-14 libqrtr-glib0
usb-modeswitch-data
libduktape207 libnghttp3-9 librtmp1
wireless-regdb
libexpat1 libngtcp2-16 libsasl2-2
wpasupplicant
libglib2.0-0t64 libngtcp2-crypto-gnutls8 libsasl2-modules
xdg-user-dirs
libglib2.0-data libnl-3-200
libsasl2-modules-db xml-core
Suggested packages:
low-memory-monitor libsasl2-modules-gssapi-mit
libsasl2-modules-sql comgt debhelper
libcryptsetup12 | libsasl2-modules-gssapi-heimdal libteam-utils
wvdial
libtss2-rc0t64 libsasl2-modules-ldap iptables
wpagui
pcscd libsasl2-modules-otp sgml-base-doc
libengine-pkcs11-openssl
Summary:
Upgrading: 0, Installing: 69, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 0
Download size: 28.2 MB
Space needed: 110 MB / 8295 MB available
Installing netplan.io instead brings in:
Installing:
netplan.io
Installing dependencies:
ca-certificates libexpat1 libsqlite3-0
python3-gi python3-yaml
dbus libgirepository-1.0-1 libxml2
python3-markdown-it python3.12
dbus-bin libglib2.0-0t64 libyaml-0-2
python3-mdurl python3.12-minimal
dbus-daemon libglib2.0-data media-types
python3-minimal shared-mime-info
dbus-session-bus-common libicu72 netplan-generator
python3-netifaces xdg-user-dirs
dbus-system-bus-common libnetplan1 openssl
python3-netplan
gir1.2-girepository-2.0 libpython3-stdlib python3
python3-pkg-resources
gir1.2-glib-2.0 libpython3.12-minimal python3-cffi-backend
python3-pygments
libdbus-1-3 libpython3.12-stdlib python3-dbus
python3-rich
Suggested packages:
default-dbus-session-bus | wpasupplicant python3-tk
python-pygments-doc binutils
| dbus-session-bus openvswitch-switch python3-venv
ttf-bitstream-vera binfmt-support
low-memory-monitor iw python-dbus-doc
python3.12-venv
network-manager python3-doc python3-setuptools
python3.12-doc
Summary:
Upgrading: 0, Installing: 42, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 0
Download size: 25.2 MB
Space needed: 101 MB / 8340 MB available
So we have a net gain of ~200K when using networkd, a net loss of
~110M when using network-manager, and a net loss of ~101M when using
netplan.
Furthermore, netplan pulls in a lot of python dependencies that are
not exactly recommended, as Simon said. And I think one of the reasons
ifupdown2 never gained traction was because it pulled in python3,
which was considered a deal breaker for the default minimal install.
It seems to me if something other than networkd is desired,
network-manager would be the better choice.
