[Bug 1333735] [NEW] gdebi-kde dependencies are broken

[Yuv]

Public bug reported:

To whom it may concern:

Can you please make it possible to install gdebi-kde without installing
MySQL and other software that might -- depending on the user's need --
be considered unnecessary bloat?

I use the packages from the Kubuntu PPA on top of 'buntu 14.04

The bottom line:
* there is something wrong in the dependencies definition when `sudo apt-get install gdebi-kde` does not install the requested package.
* There is something even more wrong in making such a small and arguably critical (how is software to be installed if not by gdebi-kde?) dependenent on so much other software.
* The fully detailed analysis is toward the end of this bug report.
* Arguably there are two ways to fix the bug:
(1) add that additional missing dependency as identified in the full detailed analysis; or
(2) restrict dependencies to the strictly necessary.
* It may be possible that the missing dependency is a strict necessity and then (2) collapses into (1), but I question the wisdom of such monolithic software package design and recommend a good hard look at how gdebi-kde and its dependencies are laid out compared with its Gnome equivalent gdebi.

The full detailed analysis:
* The system on which this issue came up is a mixed bag of experiments.  At different times it was used to experiment with different desktops and software packages, including KDE, Unity, LXDE, XFCE.
* I started another experiment and wanted to install a deb package downloaded from the internet by double-clicking it Dolphin.
* Dolphin started the Ubuntu software centre, which I *hate* with a passion and probably got smuggled in unintentionally.  So I purged it:
  apt-get purge lubuntu-software-centre
  apt-get purge software-centre
* At this point two file associations were left in Dolphin, which are probably the result of my own mess, appear annoyingly on many file types, and are easy to fix by removing them:
- gedit
- Videos
* And now there was no file association for .deb files at all, so I tried

  sudo apt-get install gdebi-kde

* Which failed with the error message

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 gdebi-kde : Depends: python3-pykde4 but it is not going to be installed

* I walked down the dependecy tree with sudo apt-get install
<PUT_MISSING_DEPENDENCY HERE> and found, in sequence:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 python3-pykde4 : Depends: kdepim-runtime but it is not going to be installed

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 kdepim-runtime : Depends: akonadi-server (>= 1.8) but it is not going to be installed

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 akonadi-server : Depends: akonadi-backend-mysql (= 1.12.1-0ubuntu1.1) but it is not going to be installed

* Until I probably got to the bottom of the problem:

sudo apt-get install akonadi-backend-mysql
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libdbd-mysql-perl libterm-readkey-perl mysql-common-5.6 python-oneconf
  python-pysqlite2
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  akonadi-server libboost-program-options1.54.0 libjemalloc1
  libmariadbclient18 libqt4-sql-mysql mariadb-client-core-5.5 mariadb-common
  mariadb-server-core-5.5
Suggested packages:
  akonadi-backend-sqlite akonadi-backend-postgresql
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  mysql-client-5.6 mysql-client-core-5.6 mysql-server-5.6
  mysql-server-core-5.6
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  akonadi-backend-mysql akonadi-server libboost-program-options1.54.0
  libjemalloc1 libmariadbclient18 libqt4-sql-mysql mariadb-client-core-5.5
  mariadb-common mariadb-server-core-5.5
0 upgraded, 9 newly installed, 4 to remove and 59 not upgraded.
Need to get 5,906 kB of archives.
After this operation, 128 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.

So I have probably found how to fix my machine, but is this really
right?

I mean:
* yes, I know mariadb is the right thing to do and I intend to migrate to it at some point.  But I am not ready yet.  Why does akonadi-backend-mysql force me to reomve mysql5.6?
* and more importantly, why is the installation of a software installer dependent on the installation of a PIM, which in turn is dependent on the installation of a database?  There is something inherently wrong here.
* The short term fix was to install the GTK version of gdebi.
* The recommandation for whoever maintains gdebi-kde to look into whether the problem is in the dependencies definition of the package, or whether it is in the software itself (or rather in python3-pykde4) that would be better broken into smaller parts.

Thank you for reading.
Yuv

** Affects: kubuntu-ppa
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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Title:
  gdebi-kde dependencies are broken

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