[Bluez-devel] [Pkg-bluetooth-maintainers] dbus dependency introduces unwanted X11 dependency

[Marcel Holtmann]

Hi Filippo,

> > I'm currently running bluez-utils version 2.25-1
> > 
> > Upgrading to 3.7-1 gives me the following problem:
> > 
> > I have a server running Debian/testing.
> > I want to keep this server completely free from XWindow stuff.
> 
> on a clean etch system the installation of bluez-utils brings in the following
> packages:
> 
> dbus libbluetooth2 libdbus-1-3 libexpat1 libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxdmcp6
> x11-common
> 
> the only x-related stuff is the x11 client libraries and x11-common, totalling
> 4MB of diskspace, you won't be able to run an X server with any of those
> packages.
> 
> > 
> > However, this server is to act as a bluetooth accesspoint using
> > the PAN profile, and the pand deamon.
> > 
> > This works fine with version 2.25-1 of bluez-utils/
> > 
> > With the new version, dbus gets pulled in. Why?
> > Isn't libdbus enough?
> 
> starting with bluez 3.x most of the functionality has been moved to dbus, which
> is used among other things for pinhelper functionalities.
> and no, libdbus isn't enough unless I'm missing something, bluez (hcid) needs to
> register to the local dbus.

the bluez-utils depends on a working D-Bus system bus. It has no
dependency on X or anything else (besides the Bluetooth library). So if
it pulls in X related stuff then this is a fault of D-Bus or its package
and not a problem within the bluez-utils package.

> > This is so ugly...
> > 
> > It should be possible to run pand without the X11 burden.
> > It used to be possible in the past, but not anymore.
> 
> I'm not sure if it makes any sense to have bluetooth daemons splitted in its own
> package. 

No. All of them will be extended with D-Bus functionality anyway. D-Bus
is the way to go and people fighting it are on a dead end.

Regards

Marcel