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

Thu Mar 22 10:48:13 CET 2012

2012/3/22 Thierry Vignaud <thierry.vignaud at gmail.com>:
+> 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
+
+Thanks for your proposal. But anyway this is for Mageia 3. Could we
+please calm down and focus again on coming release? We do have work
+enough for everybody :)
+
+Cheers
+
+-- 
+Anne
+http://www.mageia.org
+