Who's in charge of package dependencies?

PhilArch33 · Yesterday 20:13:25

I've only been an Arch user since the July 2026 ISO and still in love with Arch btw! Best overall distro but I've had some issues with dependencies for some packages. It's nothing critical, hence the reason why I'm posting in this discussion. There's been a few occasions were some packages were missing. Packages that for me should be a dependency. Unfortunately I didn't take note of them but there's one right now: nemo. I've installed nemo last night because I prefer it over KDE Dolphin but there was an issue. It wasn't detecting my tablet when I plugged it over USB while Dolphin was detecting it no problem. I troubleshooted quite a bit until I figured out it was missing a package: gvfsd-mtp. Somehow when I installed nemo, it didn't get picked up as a dependency. Maybe it's me who doesn't quite understand the purpose of dependencies but how is someone supposed to know to install gvsfd-mtp when installing nemo? As soon as I installed it and restarted my system, nemo picked up my tablet straight away. Now the following packages were installed but I don't know if they were installed as part of the nemo package or not but they are required by nemo: gvfsd, gvsusidk2-volume-monitor.

So if someone in charge of packages or dependencies out there thinks gvfsd-mtp should be a required package during nemo install then glad I could help. If this turns out to be helpful then let me know. This kind of issue happened to me a few times and it's hard to figure out what the problem is where the problem is that you're missing a package that you don't even know that you need.

Thank you.

Muflone · Yesterday 21:19:55

Hi Phil

Each package has its maintainers, so each maintainer is in charge of the package's dependencies.

The package nemo has a dependency of gvfs, which in turn has many optional dependencies

https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/gvfs/

So when you install gvfs the first time pacman will show the optional dependencies, indicating you might need gvfs-mtp for Android support

Just make sure to always read the pacman output, it's often very useful for diagnosing issues

cyyynthia · Yesterday 21:30:57

Hello and welcome to Arch Linux!

Dependencies are set by the package maintainers who can be identified on https://archlinux.org/packages. While there is a GitLab server you raise issues in, the registration flow is very rocky as of now so the best way to reach Arch staff in general is by email on the Arch Linux mailing lists. Though for the past few days there's been a lot of emails failing to properly deliver to the lists, getting stuck in the pipes - perhaps one might have better luck on the IRC channels. But asking on the Arch Forums is a very good way to have other users weigh in and share their knowledge too

For your specific situation, nemo has gvfs as a dependency, which has gvfs-mtp as an optional dependency. Because Arch is extremely unopinionated and pacman is designed to be very quiet (i.e. the polar opposite of Debian's approach), you are not explicitly prompted to install optional dependencies. However, pacman will always tell you the list of optional dependencies for the packages you've installed and what features you'd gain if you installed that dependency. You can always query a package's information to find out, among other things, its list of optional dependencies.

$ pacman -Qi gvfs
Name            : gvfs
Version         : 1.60.3-3
Description     : Virtual filesystem implementation for GIO
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gvfs
Licenses        : LGPL-2.0-only
Groups          : gnome
Provides        : None
Depends On      : dconf  fuse3  gcr-4  glib2  glibc  gsettings-desktop-schemas  libarchive  libbluray  libcdio  libcdio-paranoia  libgcc  libgcrypt  libgudev  libsecret  libsoup3  polkit  procps-ng  systemd  systemd-libs  udisks2
Optional Deps   : gvfs-afc: AFC support (Apple mobile devices)
                  gvfs-dnssd: DNS-SD and WebDAV support (macOS file sharing)
                  gvfs-goa: Gnome Online Accounts support (e.g. OwnCloud)
                  gvfs-gphoto2: gphoto2 support (PTP camera, MTP media player)
                  gvfs-mtp: MTP support (Android, media player) [installed]
                  gvfs-nfs: NFS support
                  gvfs-onedrive: Microsoft OneDrive support
                  gvfs-smb: SMB/CIFS support (Windows file sharing)
                  gvfs-wsdd: Web Services Dynamic Discovery support (Windows discovery)
Required By     : gvfs-mtp
Optional For    : ffmpegthumbnailer  glib2  thunar  vscodium-electron-bin
Conflicts With  : gvfs-google<=1.58.3-1
Replaces        : gvfs-google<=1.58.3-1
Installed Size  : 5.26 MiB
Packager        : Ike Devolder <ike.devolder@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Wed 16 Sep 2026 13:39:52 CEST
Install Date    : Tue 22 Sep 2026 09:30:37 CEST
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : Signature

You can find a lot of handy snippets on the Arch Wiki's Pacman/Tips and tricks, and in your case the snippet in Maintenance - Listing packages - With optional dependencies might interest you to find out about packages you might be interested in installing

LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 pacman -Qei | sed '/^[^NO ]/d;/None$/d' | awk 'BEGIN{RS=ORS="\n\n";FS=OFS="\n\\S"} /Optional Deps/ {print $1"\nO"$2}'

PhilArch33 · Yesterday 22:55:05

Thanks for the feedback and thanks cyyynthia for the link! Useful indeed. I should be grateful to have found a distro that helps me learn with not everything just handed to me. I would have truly appreciated Arch when I was younger. It would have helped me learn a great deal by troubleshooting everything as I go. Now I'm getting old and troubleshooting issues is not always as fun as it used to... I'm still going to hold on to Arch though! I love the bleeding edge rolling release aspect of it.

Arch Linux

#1 Yesterday 20:13:25

Who's in charge of package dependencies?

#2 Yesterday 21:19:55

Re: Who's in charge of package dependencies?

#3 Yesterday 21:30:57

Re: Who's in charge of package dependencies?

#4 Yesterday 22:55:05

Re: Who's in charge of package dependencies?

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