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sunknudsen
Asked: 2020-12-21 11:38:51 +0800 CST

Why does mailutils depend on mariadb-common and mysql-common and what are *-common packages in the first place?

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I was about to install mailutils and postfix when I notice how many dependencies were involved.

$ apt install mailutils postfix
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  guile-2.2-libs libgc1c2 libgsasl7 libkyotocabinet16v5 libltdl7 liblzo2-2 libmailutils5 libmariadb3 libntlm0 libpython2.7 mailutils-common
  mariadb-common mysql-common ssl-cert

Why does mailutils depend on mariadb-common and mysql-common and what are *-common packages in the first place?

I am trying to install a SMTP server that will run localhost-only and wish to be able to send emails using the mail command installing as few dependencies as possible.

debian apt

1 Answers

  1. postfix has lots of features. Dependency chain: postfix, postfix-mysql, libmariadbclient18, mysql-common.

    To skip optional dependencies, use apt-get --no-install-recommends.

    As to what "common" packages, are from mysql-common description:

    This package includes files needed by all versions of the client library, e.g. /etc/mysql/my.cnf.

    Extrapolating a bit, common packages contain files used by most users of a thing. They might be shared libraries containing common code, where a server and a client package can be installed separately. Or, shared config files used by all versions of a thing.

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