Network Manager dependencies

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 3:24 AM, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:
> IMO, we'll end up sooner or later using NM on X-less boxes by default

It might be the case eventually, but we're not there yet.

> NM on Fedora can now handle bonding and bridging by reading
> "/etc/sysconfig/netwok-scripts/ifcfg-*" files.
>
> I was curious about whether NM could do the same by reading
> "/etc/network/interfaces" so I've just tried to install NM in an
> X-less Quantal VM.

Not by reading /e/n/i; but bonding and bridging support was added in
NetworkManager 0.9.4.0.

There is currently no way to configure it besides the rather opaque
files in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections. This will be fixed
eventually, but you'll still see the configuration methods come up in
nm-applet first, before it's added to the command-line configuration
tool or to the /e/n/i parser (and parsing that is difficult, if not
dangerous anyway).

>
> "apt-get install network-manager" results in:
>
[...]
> and
>
> "apt-get install network-manager -o APT::Install-Recommends=false" results in:
>
[...]
> So, even an installation of NM without its "Recommends" (which isn't
> something that I like to do or, AFAIK, something that's recommended)
> results in the installation of packages that are only needed by a DE,
> like dconf-gsettings-backend, dconf-service, glib-networking,
> glib-networking-common, glib-networking-services,
> gsettings-desktop-schemas.
>
[...]
> Could NM's "Depends" and "Recommends" be pared down for an X-less
> use-case? Thanks.

"We'll burn that bridge when we get there." :)

Seriously though; I agree that some of these requirements are
unfortunate, especially with all this coming from glib-networking
(which I'll look to make sure is really required). Any help you can
provide to reducing these requirements and making NetworkManager
suitable on X-less systems is definitely welcome. I recommend you come
hang around on #nm on Freenode if it's the case; this is where the
upstream NetworkManager development gets done.

Regards,

Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre <mathieu-tl at ubuntu.com>
Freenode: cyphermox, Jabber: mathieu.tl at gmail.com
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