On 26/02/10 22:58, Pierre Schmitz wrote:

Sounds reasonable. This way we could trim base to the bare minimum.

Theses changes might require some adjustments to the installer though. For example it should install jfstools if it had created a jfs partition.

I have not flagged jfstools, xfstools etc to removed from [core] for this reason. I can open a bug report requesting this be done to the installer so we can further reduce base at a later date. Allan

Am 26.02.2010 14:03, schrieb Allan McRae:

...

We should also remove wpa_supplicant from base. My plans were to create a new "base-networking" and "base-wireless" group. The base-wireless group would (among others) cover wpa_supplicant.

I will leave wpa_supplicant in base until such a group is created.

Right now, neither wireless_tools, nor crda, nor iw is on base, why should wpa_supplicant be there?

On 26/02/10 23:40, Roman Kyrylych wrote:

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 11:28, Allan McRae<allan@archlinux.org> wrote:

...

HI,

I mentioned this several months ago and got no response so I will post again. If there are no objections in 48 hours, the rebuilds will start hitting [testing].

FS#12890 suggests cleaning some of the packages from the base group. The goals are to remove old packages that are really no longer needed (e.g. cpio) and packages that are only needed as dependencies for other packages and would not be installed otherwise (e.g. libfetch). That will clean up the package selection list for the base group in the installer.

Here is the list of what I will do: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/User:Allan/Base_Cleanup It splits the packages in the base group into those staying in base; those removed from base but staying in [core]; those removed from [core]. Packages marked with (???) mean I am not sure what category to put them in. If there are no comments, I will be playing it safe with these.

Any comments before I start?

What is the reason to move kbd out of the base group? Sure, it will be pulled in since initscripts depend on it, but so is file, for example, which is really only needed by mkinitcpio. So where do we draw a line? (just trying to understand the reasoning here)

My reasoning is... I have used "file" before but I have no idea what binaries are in kbd. Very subjective, but that is the best I have. :P

My comments, based on the wiki page:

The following packages should not be in the base group, because they are not 'must have on every system' packages: * cryptsetup * device-mapper * dhcpcd * jfsutils * lvm2 * mdadm * ppp * reiserfsprogs * rp-pppoe * wpa_supplicant * xfsprogs they should be selected by the installer automatically, if it determines that they are required for the setup.

I agree. But that is for the future when the installer is that smart. I will file and installer bug report requesting this.

The following packages should not be in the base group, because they are just a dependencies for other packages in the base group: * groff - /usr/bin/man uses it to format pages * tzdata - required by glibc

Seems fine to me.

The following packages are questionable: * diffutils - why it should be on every system?

base=devel maybe?

* gawk - why it should be on every system? * gettext - shouldn't it be required by something? * mailx

Don't we keep that around for some standards reason.

* mlocate - not really needed on every system, and I doubt that lots of scripts expect it to be present (like grep, for example)

fine.

* pciutils - are they used by initscripts or udev? * pcmciautils - are they used by initscripts or udev?

No idea here...

* perl - required by groff only?

This package I thought should not be installed as a dependency, which it would be if groff pulled it.

* sysfsutils - required by pcmciautils only?

Fine.

* texinfo - don't (shouldn't) packages that include info files install correctly without texinfo installed?

They should. But is "info" a command we want in the base group. I lean towards yes.

* usbutils - are they used by initscripts or udev? * vi - ok, no bikeshed thing here, but there's nano for base

Please note that the above comments are about the base group, not core repo or the list of packages that are preinstalled on install disks.

Thanks for the comments. I should add that "base" means almost nothing to me as I only use it for build chroots. My main installs start off with only kernel26, initscripts, e2fsprogs, coreutils and pacman (or something like that). Allan

Hi, I have committed the removal of the discussed packages from base to trunk. Commit message: http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-commits/2010-February/080091.htm... I will let the rebuilds occur naturally. That also means any maintainer that has missed this thread so far and objects will have the opportunity to revert. Allan

2010/2/28, Dieter Plaetinck <dieter@plaetinck.be>:

Allan, what do you mean with "Remove from base only when installer is smarter" ? @ http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/User:Allan/Base_Cleanup

I guess that Allan doesn't remove it from base now. -- Arch Linux Developer http://www.archlinux.org http://www.archlinux.it