Thank you, Sven! I contacted the folks who originally encountered the
211087 issues, and they raised no objections.
Years ago there were huge transition issues, and tacking on the control
center dependency to a popular terminal emulation package was an
expedient way to get a bunch of 1.x libraries upgraded. Nowadays, with
even sarge using gnome-terminal 2.8, those issues are ancient history.
Herbert Xu raised some doubts in October 2003 about whether the fix
adopted (depending on control center) captured exactly the requirements,
but certainly there were some sticky issues around the very large amount
of software experiencing a sea-change in assumptions.
Santiago Vila did some minor grumbling in September of 2004:
> I had the idea that it was possible to install Gnome applications
> without having to install the entire Gnome suite, but this is too much.
Otherwise folks are mostly resigned to swallowing a big pile of KDE or
Gnome software and they get on with it. Certainly that was my
perspective for years. But now I would like to improve Debian, by
allowing new installs to pick up just what they need. Installing lots
of unused software is a Bad Thing; in addition to resource issues, there
is an ongoing burden to upgrade such software as releases come out.
The control center is not truly /necessary/ for the typical user to
sensibly use the terminal emulator. Now, some folks will want "the
Gnome System" installed, and they will be unaffected by the change,
since they will be pulling in one or more of these packages which quite
reasonably have a dependency on the control center:
gnome-core, gnome-session, gnome-desktop-environment,
gnome-desktop-data, gnome-panel, gnome-bin, gnome-office, etc.
My gnome-terminal
<http://www.sector6.net/devel/debian/dists/lenny/main/binary-i386/jh-gnome-terminal_2.22.0-1_i386.deb>,
from `dpkg-buildpackage -D -b -sd -ptrue`, runs with all features very
happily, although "apt-get install gnome-terminal" would still offer to
pull in a bunch of libs plus many apps unrelated to terminal emulation:
The following extra packages will be installed:
alacarte app-install-data avahi-daemon avahi-utils capplets-data cdrdao
cupsys cupsys-client cupsys-common deborphan deskbar-applet desktop-base
desktop-file-utils dialog dvd+rw-tools evolution-data-server
evolution-data-server-common foomatic-db foomatic-db-engine
foomatic-filters genisoimage gnome-about gnome-applets gnome-applets-data
gnome-control-center gnome-desktop-data gnome-media gnome-media-common
gnome-menus gnome-mount gnome-netstatus-applet gnome-panel
gnome-panel-data
gnome-session gnome-system-monitor gnome-terminal-data gnome-user-guide
gnome-utils gs-esp gstreamer0.10-alsa gstreamer0.10-plugins-base
gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-x metacity metacity-common
nautilus nautilus-cd-burner nautilus-data python-beagle python-dbus
python-fpconst python-glade2 python-gmenu python-gnome2
python-gnome2-desktop python-pyorbit python-soappy samba-common smbclient
ssl-cert synaptic system-tools-backends wodim xkb-data
I recommend dropping the "Depends: gnome-control-center", urgency==low.
Cheers,
JH
