It doesn't require X. It only tries to make use of it, if its available. Since the patch only unsets your DISPLAY variable and update-app-install works in my local console, I assume, that you have a DISPLAY variable that points to a non working/accessible x server. That is why the programm failed. What in the end is a bug.
Right, I am also not happy with the warning. I will take a look if we can separate the pygtk stuff from the caching. But since the bug/warning only appears in a non grafical environment, I think that the chance to confuse a non techie user is quite small :) Current alternatives are to create the cache at build time and increase the package size by 3,5 Mbyte or to call it on the first run of gnome- app-install and increase its startup time by some seconds. The second one is not acceptable since the cache was introduced to decrease the startup time :) -- g-a-i postinst fails if X is not running https://launchpad.net/bugs/59403 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs