Bug#1027308: chezdav: should probably depend on or recommend avahi-daemon

[Andres Salomon]

Package: chezdav
Version: 2.5-1
Severity: normal

I installed chezdav on a bullseye server, and here's what got installed:

dilinger@hm90:~$ sudo apt-get install chezdav
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
dbus dbus-user-session dconf-gsettings-backend dconf-service glib-networking glib-networking-common
glib-networking-services gsettings-desktop-schemas libavahi-client3 libavahi-common-data
libavahi-common3 libavahi-glib1 libavahi-gobject0 libdconf1 libpam-systemd libphodav-2.0-0
libphodav-2.0-common libproxy1v5 libsoup2.4-1
The following NEW packages will be installed:
chezdav dbus dbus-user-session dconf-gsettings-backend dconf-service glib-networking
glib-networking-common glib-networking-services gsettings-desktop-schemas libavahi-client3
libavahi-common-data libavahi-common3 libavahi-glib1 libavahi-gobject0 libdconf1 libpam-systemd
libphodav-2.0-0 libphodav-2.0-common libproxy1v5 libsoup2.4-1
0 upgraded, 20 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
[...]

Note that avahi-daemon was not already installed on the server. When I
attemped to run it:


dilinger@hm90:~$ chezdav -P /srv/shared/
phodav: mDNS failed: Failed to create avahi client: Daemon not running


After installing avahi-daemon, the command worked successfully. It should
probably either depend upon or recommend avahi-daemon.



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.6
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'proposed-updates'), (500, 'stable'), (100, 'bullseye-fasttrack')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-20-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU threads)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages chezdav depends on:
pn libavahi-gobject0 <none>
ii libc6 2.31-13+deb11u5
ii libglib2.0-0 2.66.8-1
pn libphodav-2.0-0 <none>
ii libsoup2.4-1 2.72.0-2

chezdav recommends no packages.

chezdav suggests no packages.

[Andreas Henriksson]

Hello Andres Salomon,

Thanks for your bug report! comments below.

On Thu, Dec 29, 2022 at 11:55:25PM -0500, Andres Salomon wrote:
> Package: chezdav
> Version: 2.5-1
> Severity: normal
>
> I installed chezdav on a bullseye server, and here's what got installed:

[...]
> Note that avahi-daemon was not already installed on the server. When I
> attemped to run it:
>
>
> dilinger@hm90:~$ chezdav -P /srv/shared/
> phodav: mDNS failed: Failed to create avahi client: Daemon not running

Relevant code:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/phodav/-/blob/a31d890d4805291d9f4af82bf43279ad4fb76059/bin/chezdav.c#L201-205

We're enabling the AVAHI build option in the debian package build
(by having the required build-dependencies for it and also specifying
the `-Dauto_features=enabled` in debian/rules).

So apparently when built with avahi support, failures to contact
the daemon is considered a fatal error (which spontaneously I thought
would be better as just a warning, since this is an optional feature in
the first place?!).... unless the user explicitly passes the --no-mdns
option to disable mdns usage (so I guess it makes sense after all).

> After installing avahi-daemon, the command worked successfully. It should
> probably either depend upon or recommend avahi-daemon.

Since there's a runtime switch to override mdns I'll add it as a
Recommends.

Regards,
Andreas Henriksson