Arch Linux

As of 5.3.1-1, libxkbcommon-x11 is listed only as an optional dependency of qt5-base. I question whether it should instead be a full dependency. I noticed the problem when sqlitebrowser updated from qt4 to qt5. After the update, it refused to start complaining of no xcb plugin for qt5. I finally realized the problem was the missing package libxkbcommon-x11. It also appears to be a common problem as nearly all qt5 programs require this package yet not all depend on it (they expect the qt install to provide it.)

I would like at least a consensus on whether it should be the underlying packages should depend on libxkbcommon-x11 or whether it should be a dependency of qt5-base itself. Since, if I understand correctly, nearly all qt5 apps will need this dependency and libxkbcommon-x11 has very few dependencies of its own I suggest simply changing it from opt-depends to depends.

From the dependencies of libxkbcommon-x11, libxcb is already required by qt5-base via its xcb-util-wm dependency. That leaves only libxkbcommon and xkeyboard-config as dependencies. These packages already have 89% and 94% install rates respectively from the archlinux.de package stats, the latter being required by xorg-server-common. Those 3 packages together weigh in at only 6836KB installed with the bulk of that being xkeyboard-config.

I understand if qt5 is trying to be independent from X (since it supports Wayland) but qt5-base is already dependent on libx11 via its libxi and libxrender dependencies (note libxkbcommon-x11 is not dependent on libx11.) I believe adding this dependency will save a lot of users headaches when their qt5 apps complain about lack of xcb yet they already have xcb-related packages installed. Since libxkbcommon-x11 doesn't have "xcb" in its name I wasn't looking at it until a user pointed it out over IRC.