Package: packer Version: 1.3.4+dfsg-4+b1 Severity: minor qemu package is a dummy metapackage which has no actual reason to exist. Qemu provides 2 entirely different modes of operations, it is a system-level emulation, where qemu emulates whole (hardware) system with its own CPU, memory subsystem, peripherial devices, BIOS/firmware etc. This is qemu-system, or, with hardware assistance, qemu-kvm. And another mode, where it can run linux programs built for different architecture on another linux system, for example to run arm linux binaries on an x86 linux. This is qemu-user and variations.
Apparently packer works with the system emulation mode, so it should depend on on of the system emulation packages qemu provides. If you want native-speed hardware-assisted virtualization you might depend on qemu-kvm which is provided by one of the qemu-system subpackages. Or you can recommend either whole qemu-system package or it and all of its variations, qemu-system-XXX, with XXX being arm, misc, mips, ppc, sparc, s390x and x86 (all as alternatives), - depending on what you actually use. Recommending `qemu' pulls both all system-mode emulations (one of which you need) and all linux-user mode emulations which is not what you need. The goal is to remove `qemu' binary metapackage from Debian, because this package is not right, it is pulling whole qemu with all its modes of operations, - this is not what most people actually want, due to what's been said above. Thanks, /mjt
