[arch-dev-public] Proposal: minimal base system

[Giancarlo Razzolini]

Em janeiro 21, 2019 20:03 Levente Polyak via arch-dev-public escreveu:
> # Proposal
> 
> There is no strict definition of what a minimal Arch Linux system
> installation must contain. However in reality we mostly don’t add any
> packages that are in the base group as a dependency to other packages,
> which basically makes it a hard requirement.

First of all, I'm glad you're bringing this up, even if the last two times
this was brought up, either it ended on bikeshedding or the thread simply died.
We have been recommending users to install base at least since 2007.
I went through the wiki history and found the entry when we started telling
users to install base. It is on another thread about this "base-system" group.
I don't want to dig it up.

> 
> To overcome the disadvantages, a better way to handle a strictly defined
> set would be a simple virtual base-system package that depends on the
> bare minimum of what we define as given and required. This virtual
> package can be changed/extended and every installation will pull it in
> during the next system upgrade.
>

base-system with the bare minimal is the way to go, I agree with this. With
strict dependency between packages. No more "assuming" base is installed.

> Everything that won’t be part of base-system needs to be added as a
> dependency to all requiring packages; alternatively don't omit any first
> level runtime dependencies at all.
> 
> This package should only depend on strictly required explicit packages
> to get a working minimal Arch Linux system.
> 
> The proposed end result is:
> - base: convenient helper group for quickly getting a working system
>   when installing, must include the new base-system package
> - base-system: package defining the minimum dependencies for a working
>   base runtime
> 
> Possible candidates for the virtual package:
> 
> #### Base requirements:
> - filesystem
> - gcc-libs
> - glibc
> - bash
> - coreutils
> 
> #### Distro requirements:
> - licenses
> - pacman
> - systemd
> 
> #### Some POSIX tools
> - coreutils
> - file
> - findutils
> - gawk
> - grep
> - procps-ng
> - sed
> - tar
> - gettext
> - pciutils
> - psmisc
> - shadow
> - util-linux
> - bzip2
> - gzip
> - xz
> 
> #### Some networking tools
> - iputils
> - iproute2
> 
>

I agree with this package list. It's missing mkinitcpio though.

Hopefully this time we'll get this moving along. Count me in for testing.

Regards,
Giancarlo Razzolini
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