[arch-dev-public] Cleaning up the base group

[Aaron Griffin]

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 5:27 AM, Thomas Bächler <thomas at archlinux.org> wrote:
> - dialog
> Nothing depends on it, why do we even need it in core?

Don't we have tools in base which use dialog? The only ones I can
think of are the installer and netcfg.

> - hwdetect
> Nothing uses it, we don't need that in core either

Agreed. We don't even use hwdetect for anything anymore. Move to extra.

> - ca-certificates, lzo2, openssl, wpa_supplicant
> We need those in core, but really not in base

Agreed. Let's remove them from base.

> - dash
> Nobody uses it by default, may IMO stay in core, but has no place in base

I agree. In the future when we actually get things that use dash, we
can throw it back in base.

> - ppp, rp-pppoe (plus libpcap dep)
> Only few people need those, leave them in core, but remove from base

Like RedShift said, as long as we make sure they're on the ISO, we
should be good.

> - tcp_wrappers
> No base package needs them as far I know, leave in core, remove from base

Are you sure about this? Something feels a little wrong about that,
but it may just be a gut feeling.


> We should also remove all packages from base that only are in there as a
> dependency of another package and for no other reason, as they will be
> pulled in when needed anyway.

Hmmm, that's probably a good idea. It would definitely clean up
"pacman -Sg base". As long as we ensure they deps still stay in core.

> Packages that we should think about:
> - mdadm
> - pcmciautils
> - cryptsetup, lvm2 (plus their deps libgcrypt, libgpg-error, device-mapper)
> Those are base tools, but not everybody needs them. I'd like to keep them in
> base, but maybe someone else may disagree.

Hmm, I agree. Another "remove from base, keep on ISO" case

> - nano
> Do we really need another editor in base? Let's leave it in core, remove it
> from base.

Agreed, but just note that we still want it on the ISO (again, heh)