[arch-dev-public] [RFC] another base cleanup

Dave Reisner d at falconindy.com
Wed Jun 6 08:36:13 EDT 2012


On Wed, Jun 06, 2012 at 01:55:30PM +0200, Tom Gundersen wrote:
> Hi guys,
> 
> We have been discussing on IRC on and off that we should cleanup our
> base group. I thought I'd make a suggestion, this should clearly be
> improved upon, but my main goal is to get the discussion going on the
> ML.
> 
> It seems to me that the base group has several purposes, so to make
> things simpler I suggest splitting it up into several sub-groups, each
> with a specific purpose. In the end we might want to merge some/all of
> these together, or even drop some of them completely, but I thought
> presenting it in this way made the most sense:

I'm not sure I agree with your definition of "simpler" here...
currently, you can install the 'base' group (bloated or not) to a
chroot, and its bootable. With this proposed change, that won't be the
case. In that regard, I'm somewhat against this. I've left some comments
about the groups below, regardless.

> 
> We have:
> 
> 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
> drop: keep in core (for now, removing it would be a different
> discussion), but remove from base. this would be stuff that don't
> deserve being in base in its own right (but were pulled in as deps by
> others) or stuff that, while generally useful is not needed by
> everyone, and those who need it can install it.

> My initial suggestion (with some input from people on IRC):
> 
> base
> ===
> util-linux
> bash
> coreutils
> man-pages
> shadow
> glibc
> filesystem
> gettext
> licenses
> 
> 
> base-boot
> ======
> initscripts
> linux

i would think this should be part of base.

> grub (drop this in favor of syslinux? it would still be in core of course)
> syslinux (new)
> mkinitcpio (new)
> 
> 
> base-network
> ========
> wpa_supplicant
> dhcpcd
> inetutils
> iputils
> iproute2 (new)
> ppp
> pcmciautils (not strictly speaking networking, but might be needed by
> some networking devices)
> 
> 
> base-storage
> ========
> cryptsetup
> device-mapper
> e2fsprogs
> lvm2
> xfsprogs
> jfsutils
> reiserfsprogs
> mdadm

+dmraid
+btrfs-progs
+nilfs-utils

> 
> 
> base-utils
> ======
> vi
> wget

drop. we have curl as a dependency of pacman.

> which
> procps-ng
> tar
> sed
> bzip2
> diffutils
> file
> findutils
> gawk
> grep
> gzip
> less
> nano
> pacman
> psmisc
> 
> 
> dropped
> =====
> pciutils (usb pulls in hwids)
> usbutils (same as pciutils)
> syslog-ng (not necessary on all systems)
> sysvinit (pulled in by initscripts, no use on its own)
> udev/systemd-tools (alreday gone, pulled in by systemd or initscripts)
> man-db (pulled in by man-pages, no use on its own)
> perl (not necessary on its own, pulled in by whatever needs it)
> cronie (not needed by everyone)
> heirloom-mailx (not needed by everyone)
> logrotate (not needed by everyone)
> gcc-libs (pulled in by whatever needs it, no good on its own)
> texinfo (no good on its own, whatever needs it should pull it in)
> sysfsutils (no good on its own, whatever needs it should pul it in)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FYI, this is a link to a previous cleanup (sorry if I missed some
> other wikipages that I should have linked to):
> <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/User:Allan/Base_Cleanup>.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Tom


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