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

Thu Mar 22 10:45:44 CET 2012

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
+