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

[Jiachen YANG]

On 2019/01/22 7:26, Eli Schwartz via arch-dev-public wrote:
> On 1/21/19 5:03 PM, Levente Polyak via arch-dev-public wrote:
>> # Proposal
>>
>>
>> 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
>
Great to see this idea is coming back.


The definition by description is somewhat vague, so I think a definition
from a practical point may clear up some details.

Currently the "base" group serves at least 2 purposes for us:

1. A short-hand for new users to pacstrap a new Arch Linux.

2. A base chroot environment for devtools/makechrootpkg to prepare
packaging.

I would like to suggest to keep "base" group for the 1st purpose, and
make the new "base-system" (or whatever name) virtual/meta package to
serve for the 2nd purpose.

Currently, devtools/makechrootpkg will install "base" group for the
packaging environment, which essentially makes "base" group as implicit
depends for all packages (and "base-devel" as implicit makedepends). A
huge packaging environment may make the undergoing reproduciblity
efforts more difficult. So it will be better if we can shrink the
packaging environment to only contains essential things.

>> #### Some networking tools
>> - iputils
>> - iproute2
>>
Therefore if we define the "base-system" from the point of packging,
there is no need to keep networking tools in it.

Also if we have "base-system" for packaging, we may afford to include
more useful things (WiFi tools like wpa_supplicant, dialog, wpa_actiond
is what come to my mind) in "base" group for new users.


Lastly, I want to suggest "essential" instead of "base-system" as the
pkgname. But my English is poor so this suggestion is weaker than
optdepends ...


Best Hope~

--

Jiachen YANG (farseerfc)


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