[aur-general] Should "base" packages be listed as dependencies?

[Bruno Pagani]

Le 29 mars 2017 00:32:09 GMT-07:00, Baptiste Jonglez <baptiste at bitsofnetworks.org> a écrit :
>So, I didn't think such a technical question would spark so much
>passion!
>Maybe this discussion should indeed go to arch-dev-public.

Probably, since this is not just discussing the AUR policy but packaging at the whole scale.

>In the meantime, I see 4 positions emerge from the discussion:
>
>1) packages in "base" *should* be explicitely listed as dependencies
>(either for mere "technical correctness", or because of bloat, i.e. not
>   everyone wants/needs all packages from "base")

That’s what I’m in favour of, but there is another option you’ve forgot about that could potentially suits me as well (see below).

>2) packages in "base" *should not* be listed as dependencies (because
>it
>   is assumed that all Arch Linux systems have all packages from "base"
>   already installed)

Most of my installs consist of only few base packages installed as explicit, and probably half of base packages not being installed at all. I expect that to be a valid install, and I indeed don’t like bloat.

>3) it depends on the maintainer (i.e. there are no guidelines on this
>question)
>
>4) it depends on the base package in question (e.g. it would be
>acceptable
>   to depend on glibc, but not on systemd)
>
>
>I get the impression that 3) is the current status quo.  I find 4) to
>be
>quite strange and subjective, but it could be done (e.g. only allow
>library dependency such as glibc, or allow all dependencies except a
>few
>like systemd).
>
>I have two more arguments in favour of 1) or 4), related to technical
>correctness:
>
>- when a new version of glibc is released, which packages should be
>rebuilt?  Without complete dependency information, I don't see how it's
>  possible to know.

I think that TODO for rebuilding are determined by looking at ldd output, or at least they could. But I would not make that an argument for removing glibc from depends, it will anyway be indirectly depended on for most packages.

>- Assume that all "base" packages are supposed to already be installed,
>  and thus no other package depends on "base" packages.  When a new
>package X is added to "base", how is an already-running system supposed
>  to pick it up if no dependency pulls it in?

Which is a very good argument.

Also, from the discussion there is 2.b) option, which consist in additionaly redefining base (and potentially base-devel as well, but let’s keep this separated) to really only consist of the minimal core system (maybe something in the like of pacman, glibc, systemd, linux, a shell, UNIX tools, and their dependencies). But maybe that definition of base would already be controversial/to subjective in which case we’re back to 1) being the only correct solution I would say.

Bruno