On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 16:50:03 +0200, Geert Hendrickx via arch-general wrote:
Hi
A number of packages depend on inetutils merely for the `hostname` command. Common packages include xorg-xinit and mariadb, which makes that inetutils is still installed on a large number of Arch systems, although its other components like rcp, rsh, talk, telnet ... and their server counterparts, are really old, deprecated, and totally insecure. Plus the implementation seems to be largely abandoned by upstream (see FS#61041). Needless to say, I don't want any of these installed on my systems.
Since `hostname` is still somewhat common though, there are probably more implicit dependencies on it, for example FS#66603.
So I would like to eliminate dependencies on inetutils just for hostname, in one of the following ways:
1/ Split the inetutils package and provide hostname as a sub-package (but then still need to maintain inetutils)
2/ Package the Debian implementation, also used by Fedora and others (but this includes other legacy shit like `nisdomainname` and `ypdomainname`) See https://packages.qa.debian.org/h/hostname.html
3/ Use the implementation provided by gettext (/usr/lib/gettext/hostname), which is already part of base, and thus eliminates the need for explicit dependencies. Although this implementation can only *get* the hostname, not *set* it, that's all the dependent packages need, and setting the hostname is nowadays handled by systemd's `hostnamectl` anyway.
My preference would be 3/, for simplicity. I already run my systems with /usr/bin/hostname symlinked to /usr/lib/gettext/hostname (after forcibly removing inetutils), and noticed no issues.
Actually even better is 4/ avoid `hostname` as well (as it's not defined by POSIX), and use portale `uname -n` instead. I've created some requests with upstream projects including mariadb[1], testssl.sh[2], xorg-xinit[3], let's see. Geert [1] https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-23589 [2] https://github.com/drwetter/testssl.sh/pull/1707 [3] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/xinit/-/issues/18 -- geert.hendrickx.be :: geert@hendrickx.be :: PGP: 0xC4BB9E9F This e-mail was composed using 100% recycled spam messages!