[arch-general] drop dependencies on legacy inetutils for `hostname`

[Geert Hendrickx]

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


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