[2012-06-06 13:55:30 +0200] Tom Gundersen:
base: things needed by everyone everywhere, including in build chroots
base-boot: needed to boot a standard arch system, but not needed if all you want is a build chroot
base-network: needed to connect to the internet in order to upgrade our machine further, but most people probably want to select the tools they want themselves rather than installing this group. not needed in a build chroot
base-storage: some of this might be needed to mount your filesystems at boot, depending on your setup. most people probably want to select the tools they need, rather than install the whole group. not needed in a build chroot
base-utils: a sensible set of tools an admin would expect to have at his/hers disposal after installation, needed to configure the machine or install further packages. never needed on a machine/chroot where the admin won't log in to configure it
I support this; cleaning things up is always good. However, I'd like to note that it'll take great caution and gigantic rebuild lists to add explicit dependencies on all the standard tools that are proposed to be dropped (like sed, file, findutils, gawk, gzip); it's all for the better but still a heavy task. But if we choose to go ahead I'd be happy to help. If we want to keep the fragmentation to a minimum, we could merge base-network into base-storage (and call it base-io), or even merge both into base-utils, since what all those tools have in common is that they are meant to be cherry picked, but I really don't feel strongly about that either way. Oh, and:
jfsutigls
jfsutils, please. :) -- Gaetan