This week I encountered a bug when I removed mariadb server packages from my arch linux installation. Akonadi would hang and crash, causing a minute or so of the plasma desktop to be irresponsive (the panels).
The solution was to remove akonadi user directories.
I wonder if this merits a new bug or if this situation is too fringe. Maybe it’s a quirk of arch linux or something.
If it’s reproducible and you can determine what caused the crash it would be worth a bug report.
If you’re trying to troubleshoot, mariadb is an optional dependency for akonadi so perhaps you had something relying on it that broke when you removed mariadb?
I would not call a broken package dependency "“fringe”.
Removing mariadb server should have prompted you that this would also remove your akonadi-mysql backend and if that is the only one you had installed it should also have told you it would remove everyhing Akonadi and everything that depends on it.
Removing mariadb and keeping the rest in a broken state is a horrible situation and Arch needs to fix their dependencies if that can happen
Yeah, akonadi 's package doesn’t depend on mariadb (optional dependency). I’ll try bringing the subject to arch forums and see if they agree it’s an issue.
Also, akonadi could not open the database even after I installed oracle’s mysql. Should the user then have both mariadb and mysql (if they need it) installed?
I’m no expert but I think akonadi only uses mariadb or postgresql, at least they are the only 2 sql (optional) dependencies on the arch akonadi package.
It should not be optional for the Akonadi-MySQL backend (or whatever Arch calls that package).
For example here on KDE Neon (and probably Ubuntu and even Debian) the akonadi-backend-mysql has these dependencies
Depends: mariadb-client-core, mariadb-server-core, qt6-base
If I try to remove mariadb-server-core the system tells me it will need to also remove akonadi-backend-mysql.
If I agree to that it tells me it will also need to remove akonadi-server as this is the only backend package I have currently installed.
Of course I can do that and agree to further unmet dependents to be deleted, however I am also aware of the consequences (no more KDE PIM apps)
I believe akonadi works with sqlite as well.
It does.
Might even be the new default. Or at least for some distributions
That’s the thing with Arch. That’s why MariaDB is only an optional dependency for akonadi (Arch doesn’t have an akonadi-backend-mysql package). So the behavior that OP has experienced is fine: MariaDB is not a hard dependency for Akonadi.
Them that’s the problem.
Akonadi needs on of its backends, which one is the option.
Each backend’s dependencies are only optional as long as there is another backend installed.
Then again Arch is a distro for experts. They might consider unmet dependencies a user error instead of a bug.