Bug 1192663

Summary:	YaST2 desktop is broken if rpmorphan report is assumed correct
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE Distribution	Reporter:	Andres Nogueiras <anogueiras>
Component:	YaST2	Assignee:	E-mail List <yast2-maintainers>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID	QA Contact:	Jiri Srain <jsrain>
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P5 - None	CC:	jlopez
Version:	Leap 15.3
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	x86-64
OS:	openSUSE Leap 15.3
Whiteboard:
Found By:	---	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Andres Nogueiras 2021-11-13 19:33:42 UTC

The sequence of events is:

1   - launch rpmorphan
1.1 - it reports "libyui-qt-pck15" as orphaned
2   - remove it by means of YaST2 or zypper
2.2 - close YaST2
3   - start YaST2 from command line or graphical menu, and it displays a window, but can not continue to work

So, I think there is a missing dependency in YaST2 package, and that makes rpmorphan wrongly detect that libyui-qt-pck15 is not needed by it.

Comment 1 Stefan Hundhammer 2021-11-15 09:32:56 UTC

No.

That "rpmorphan" makes wrong assumptions. If you rely on tools like that and just uninstall what it suggests, you have to live with the consequences.

The YaST UI comes in different variations; two that we, the YaST team, support (Qt and NCurses) and one that is purely community-supported. The user can choose which one to use, and which one to install.

One of them is sufficient, no matter which one; but of course, it gets more luxurious if you have several of them installed. By default, we install the Qt (graphical) and the NCurses (text-based) versions. Most users use the graphical version by default; but there are also purists who prefer the text-based version, even if running from within a terminal window. Those users sometimes even wish to uninstall the graphical version. It's their choice.

So, as long as there is any one of the YaST UI plug-ins installed, the minimum requirements are fulfilled. libyui-ncurses and its package plug-in libyui-ncurses-pkg may not look as nicely, but they do the job. And that was what you just did.

Of course, in that case the graphical version doesn't start anymore; and since the Qt YaST control center is only a very simplistic Qt application, that one may still start, but anything it tries to launch won't start anymore since it always tries to start the graphical version.

In the latest version (IIRC in Tumbleweed, not in Leap 15.3) we even detect more of those pathological situations and suggest to install any missing plug-ins.

Still, the responsibility for using expert tools and making expert decisions lies with those users declaring themselves experts. ;-)

There is not much lost in your case; it's easy to recover from this situation: Simply reinstall the libyui-qt*15 packages (you don't need or want any libyui-*rest-api* packages, though).

Comment 2 Stefan Hundhammer 2021-11-15 09:33:29 UTC

Bottom line: This works as specified. This is not a bug.

Comment 3 Stefan Hundhammer 2021-11-15 09:37:29 UTC

As a little consolation, here is something else that you may be interested in:

  https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat/blob/master/doc/Unpkg-View.md

And its counterpart:

  https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat/blob/master/doc/Pkg-View.md

Comment 4 José Iván López González 2021-11-15 11:56:57 UTC

Maybe libyui-qt (and libyui-ncurses) should "supplement" to libyui.

Comment 5 Stefan Hundhammer 2021-11-25 10:59:30 UTC

(In reply to José Iván López González from comment #4)
> Maybe libyui-qt (and libyui-ncurses) should "supplement" to libyui.

I am pretty sure that we already went through all permutations of those dependencies, and whenever we changed anything, we made a different group of users unhappy because their fringe case didn't work anymore.

This is a very precarious balancing act, and I really don't want to upset that balance yet again.

Besides, I don't think that such a weak dependency would really have much influence of a tool like "rpmorphan". AFAICS that tool is just too simplistic; we don't optimize for such simplistic tools.