[Mageia-dev] installing minimal is not really that minimal

[Thierry Vignaud]

On 22 March 2012 09:31, You-Cheng Hsieh <yochenhsieh at gmail.com> wrote:
>> note that having a couple x11 package is not installing x11.
>> I've made the minimal install quite a lot smaller.
>>
>> We still have issues with suggests that makes installation explodes.
>> I've reports some bugs but maintainers just don't care.
>> See eg: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4357 that got
>> reaffected to me because the maintainer doesn't care about
>> bloating the install
>> This particular one isn't about minimal install but about gnome install
>> but the underlying issue will bloats any minimal install + light desktop
>> + _one_ gtk+ application.
>>
> Both gnome-keyring and task-gnome are maintained by nobody, could you
> modify the spec and close the bug?

I've made quite some changes for mga2 in order to bring minimal
install under control.
But that can't work in the long term.
I'ven't enough time & I cannot do it alone.
I did it twice back @mdv and yet people keep introduced new interesting
ways to bloat again.

I don't want to imply Olav did it. But he's packager of one of the offending
packages, and so inherited part of mdv heritage.
So I wrote a bug about it in order to pull maintainers in.

Every packager should be made aware of Implications of:
- suggests
- library requiring the tools they were created for

It's easy to add a suggest ("hey it'll just make the user experience better"),
but eventually the suggested package can start a cycles that will pull
quite a lot more packages.

See https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4357#c5
systemd was initially pulling:
- the whole gtk+ stack,
- openldap,
- avahi,
- gamin,
- fuse,
- colord,
- gnome-keyring,
- seahorse,
- dirmngr
- python

And none of it (but python) has actually to do with systemd.
It was just that required library actually suggest or requires another one
which also suggested or required ...

Everyone should be concerned about that.

I've broke some requires/suggest cycles, but I cannot do it alone,
everyone should contribute (and also should try not to introduce
new ones)

I think that some of those "comfort" suggests should be moved
from some low level library or tool package to task-<desktop>
packages.

Thus no I won't fix every issue.
People have to test install and have to get interested in reducing
size of install.
This is not a personal attack against Olav that does a good job.
That means for everyone to get in the implications of requires &
suggests.
Not looking only at that particular package but at the global view,
the installed system.

Not all suggests will bloat installing from DVD as some won't make
it into the DVD image. But some will b/c they're required by other
packages and thus will succeed in being suggested.

Minimal install won't be as perfect as installing basesystem with urpmi
because of installer also pulling packages needed for HW (eg: LVM,
SMP, bluetooth, ...)

At least for mga2, it's has been reduced.
But it could be more.

Also installing a desktop (GNOME & KDE) is huge these days.
Something should be made about it.
Maybe splitting task-{gnome,kde}-networking and the like and moving
them under CAT_NETWORK, CAT_OFFICE, CAT_GAMES, CAT_INTERNET,
CAT_MULTIMEDIA and the like in rpmsrate.

But this is the job of everyone.
Not just me.

My 2 cents