On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 01:09:24AM +0100, Matthias Klumpp wrote: > 2016-12-09 6:49 GMT+01:00 Josh Triplett <j...@joshtriplett.org>: > > Package: appstream > > Version: 0.10.4-1 > > Severity: normal > > > > A default desktop install pulls in appstream, by way of gnome -> > > gnome-core -> gnome-software -> appstream. Installing appstream, > > whether used or not, will cause apt to download the appstream metadata > > and icons for every apt source. This would make sense if downloaded > > when gnome-software or a similar program that needed it ran; however, > > this data gets downloaded even when updating with console-only package > > managers like apt or aptitude. > > We can not know what the user does in advance - we only know that they > installed AppStream, and if they do so, it should work. GNOME Software > will not work without appstream being installed, and even if you are > not using any GUI, you might still want to have the utility to e.g. > install missing formware automatically or search for applications on > the command-line.
In theory, though, couldn't GNOME Software and other programs using appstream metadata trigger the download/update of that metadata when they need it, rather than pre-downloading it? (That would incur a delay when GNOME Software wants to do an update, but it would avoid imposing that cost on people who don't use GNOME Software.) > > Alternatively, please arrange to have appstream or gnome-software become > > a Recommends (rather than a Depends) of a default desktop install. > > The appstream package can't be a recommends of GNOME Software, because > it pretty much breaks GS (w/o appstream, GS will not show any apps or > - in the best case - only show installed apps, which is bad usability > (as soon as the user removed an app, they have no way to add it back > via GS)). > Making GNOME Software a recommends of the GNOME metapackage is > possible though - I assume it's currently not recommended though > because it is part of core GNOME and also required for things like > editing the app groups in the GNOME Shell. I'll look into whether the GNOME team would consider making such a change. (Requests to decrease the dependencies of gnome/gnome-core tend to get a "no", though.) > P.S: How slow is your connection, actually? I am not behind the > fastest connection and the AppStream data downloads are done really > quickly. I noticed it primarily because it resulted in downloading many times the amount of metadata as apt itself, roughly tripling or quadrupling the amount of time an update takes. (In my case, I was bandwidth-limited by the mirror I downloaded from; many mirrors often don't always have enough per-user bandwidth to saturate each user's connection. However, I've also seen many reports from Debian users who have metered connections. And this seems like a more severe problem for people running testing or especially unstable, or for people who have multiple sources in sources.list.)
