Some of my users need to manage access control (so that I don't go insane managing it for them). Unfortunately, to do this they need the htpasswd utility installed, but the only way to get that currently is by installing the entire web server package. Would it be possible to split the end-user utilities (htdbm, htdigest, htpasswd, logresolve, and perhaps ab) into a separate httpd-utils package and have the base httpd package depend on it? None of those utilities seem to have dependencies on anything else in the base httpd package. I'll attach a lightly tested patch (builds, installs and seems to run OK) to the current rawhide httpd spec which implements this.
Created attachment 143302 [details] Specfile patch implementing -utils subpackage
Why don't your users install the entire httpd package then? What do they gain by only installing a split-out httpd-utils subpackage? The /usr/bin/ht* binaries still pull in much the same set of dependencies AFAICT.
Well, there are a few reasons: The machines (about 200 of them) are not web servers. They really shouldn't have a web server installed; generally I don't install a service unless I'm going to use it. Any reasonable set of security guidelines would dictate that. The httpd package is 2.8MB; the httpd-utils package comes out to 0.1MB. I attached a patch. ^_^ Obviously I could package up htpasswd in its own package; it's certainly useful enough. But then that package conflicts on any machine where I find I actually do need a web server. I guess I can try to figure out how to link htpasswd statically and stick it in /usr/local/bin.
This is a fairly obscure use case, and a fairly limited benefit. If splitting out the -utils packages eliminated dependencies this might be justifiable, but subpackage creep is not without cost and I don't think it's warranted in this case. Thanks for the request.
Bug 238257 has a good rationale for doing this. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 238257 ***