libguestfs-tools shouldn't have hard dependency on zfs-fuse daemon

Because of the way the appliance is built in Debian/Ubuntu, I suspect that none of these are dependencies (hard or otherwise). Check update-guestfs-appliance script -- it downloads the dependencies it needs when it builds the appliance.

Note also this works differently in Fedora. We ship a supermin appliance, so the dependencies are required there.

Actually my comment there is wrong. Currently update-guestfs-appliance builds
a supermin appliance, so the packages have to be installed on the host system
in order for febootstrap-supermin-helper to grab the right files.

However two things:

(1) febootstrap-supermin-helper skips files it doesn't find (this is intentional).
So you can have optional bits of appliance. Although it gets pretty hairy.

(2) Could use libguestfs-make-fixed-appliance instead and build a real appliance.

To be clear, I don't even know what all the fuss about appliances/supermin/febootstrap is.

I just want virt-sparsify to compact my libvirt ext4 disk images. Would be nice if I could do that without all these dependencies.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

My issue with the dependency on zfs-fuse is that I'm running linux-zfs (kernel not fuse) so 'apt-get install libguestfs0' actually wants to remove packages I need to boot my zfs rooted system:

The following packages will be REMOVED:
  ubuntu-zfs zfs-auto-snapshot zfs-initramfs zfsutils

I understand zfs root on linux is pretty far from a common situation at this point so which terribly incovinient for me I doubt this is as urgent for the larger world.

Also this may simply be a packaging issue?

probably should have tested this before commenting...but here's some additional info

manually installing all stated dependencies other than zfs-fuse and then installing libguestfs0 with --force-depends (and guestfish to provide a client that uses the library) it does seem to work as expected

so pretty sure that would make it a packaging bug, is this the right place for packaging bugs or is there a different place for that?

Although you can force install stuff, it would be better to drop the zfs-fuse dependency from the Debian/Ubuntu package. You will lose some functionality (the ability to handle ZFS disks).

Maybe "recommends" would be a better relationship than "depends" for most packages, at least for zfs-fuse.

I'm running ZFS on linux as well and this bug affects me. It would be great if this could be addressed! Thanks!

This has been essentially solved upstream for a while now. If Ubuntu upgrades to libguestfs 1.26 / supermin 5.1.6, then you can split the dependencies into subpackages.

For further information, see:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2014-March/msg00171.html
http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/new-in-libguestfs-1-25-38/#content
http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/analysis-of-the-size-of-libguestfs-dependencies/#content
Fedora split: http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/libguestfs.git/tree/libguestfs.spec?id=be0e44eab5b015b78373c15f07c9cbdb127ebfb1#n858

I'm still waiting on Hilko to include the patch above in the Debian package, but it certainly worked for me when I tried it.

People following this bug may also be interested in this Debian bug:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=747440

Unfortunately this still isnt fixed...

It is fixed in the Debian package vrrsion >= 1.26. Ubuntu just needs to import the latest Debian package.

This is still not fixed in Ubuntu Trusty, and it's biting me in the ass today. Another ZFS on Linux user here, as well, so the dependency on zfs-fuse - which is essentially a completely dead project AFAICT - is especially rankling.

It's fixed in Ubuntu 14.10 onwards.

What a shame...
What is the point of an LTS if fixes go into unstable + the new LTS...

Workaround here: http://jrs-s.net/2015/05/13/libguestfs0-and-zfs-on-linux-in-ubuntu/

> It's fixed in Ubuntu 14.10 onwards.

I wouldn't really say it's "fixed"; the hard dependency is moved downward a package to libguestfs-zfs, but it's still a hard dependency on zfs-fuse there, which still conflicts with zfsutils from ZFS on Linux, which is still by far the preferred method to install ZFS under Ubuntu. Does literally *anyone* still use or develop zfs-fuse?

Thanks Jim :)
I also encountered this when installing Kimchi.

libguestfs-zfs is an optional package. Don't install it if you don't require ZFS support. So yes, I believe it is genuinely fixed in 14.10 onwards.

As for LTS, you'll need to persuade the Ubuntu maintainers to fix this bug.

I requested libguestfs to be backported from vivid/utopic to trusty, see https://bugs.launchpad.net/trusty-backports/+bug/1454740