QEMU-kvm installation a dependency hell?

[Peter Boy]

I just checked installation of qemu-kvm & libvirt & virt-install on a Fedora Server Edition, that is  a headless server. It installed 338 packages / 158 mb including poppler, mesa, wayland, libX11, gtk3, cairo and a lot of additional graphic related software.

I’m wondering, why I need Wayland or X11 etc for kernel virtualization and running virtual machines? It turns my headless server into a graphical workstation. It installs software that I don't need for running a headless server, and don't want there.

If I install the same combo on a Debian / Ubuntu headless Server it installs about 40 packages / 20 mb. I know, the packages are not the same, but Debian/Ubunt doesn’t need X11, poppler, mesa, etc. for virtualization on a headless server. Can't we do the same?

[Neal Gompa]

On Sun, Mar 13, 2022 at 4:45 PM Peter Boy  wrote:
> I just checked installation of qemu-kvm & libvirt & virt-install on a Fedora Server Edition, that is  a headless server. It installed 338 packages / 158 mb including poppler, mesa, wayland, libX11, gtk3, cairo and a lot of additional graphic related software.
>
> I’m wondering, why I need Wayland or X11 etc for kernel virtualization and running virtual machines? It turns my headless server into a graphical workstation. It installs software that I don't need for running a headless server, and don't want there.

qemu-kvm installs the full graphical virtualization stack. You want
qemu-kvm-core to get a subset without the graphical UI.

Those libraries are required for the QEMU GUI to work, which people
*do* use. It also allows QEMU to work properly as an X11/Wayland
client app in a desktop environment.
> If I install the same combo on a Debian / Ubuntu headless Server it installs about 40 packages / 20 mb. I know, the packages are not the same, but Debian/Ubunt doesn’t need X11, poppler, mesa, etc. for virtualization on a headless server. Can't we do the same?

By default, Debian does the same thing. The qemu-system-x86 package
recommends the qemu-system-gui package, which pulls in that stuff.

This is not "dependency hell". "Dependency hell" is a *very* specific
thing, and this isn't it.

--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!

[Martin Pitt]

Hello Neal,

Neal Gompa [2022-03-13 17:09 -0400]:
> qemu-kvm installs the full graphical virtualization stack. You want
> qemu-kvm-core to get a subset without the graphical UI.

Thanks for pointing this out! I has annoyed me for a long time as well, but I
wasn't aware of this either.

I filed https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2063670 to ask libvirt to
only depend on the -core package.

Martin