[lsb-discuss] Adding dependency on "lsb" causes huge downloads
Anthony W. Youngman
wol at thewolery.demon.co.uk
Fri Mar 5 10:42:24 PST 2010
In message
<FE028D69955796489B510CE43DBBE803AA500EAB at rrsmsx503.amr.corp.intel.com>,
"Wichmann, Mats D" <mats.d.wichmann at intel.com> writes
>lsb-discuss-bounces at lists.linux-foundation.org wrote:
>
>>> Oh - maybe we can take a leaf from gentoo. I think it's pretty recent,
>>> but they've added an awful lot of meta-packages to do with KDE recently.
>>> Can't we define the lsb "packages" as a tree - if you ask for "lsb" you
>>> get the lot, but that includes eg "lsb-print", "lsb-mail" etc, and
>>> lsb-mail might include "lsb-mail-client", "lsb-mail-server" etc etc.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Wol
>>> --
>>> Anthony W. Youngman - anthony at thewolery.demon.co.uk
>>
>> If I can expand on this bloat issue, part of being LSB compliant from a
>> distribution point of view is ensuring that all of the libraries and
>> tools that make up the LSB spec be available, not necessarily installed.
>> As we start getting into smaller systems (netbooks, UMPC's, smart
>> phones, etc), drive space will be at a premium, especially systems
>> running from SSDs. If an application developer creates an application
>> that requires a few specific LSB libraries, it should be up to his
>> installation mechanism to at a minimum check for the required libraries
>> or, as was the case in several apps I have seen, provide their own LSB
>> compliant copies and install them with their app if the distro doesn't
>> have it installed.
>
>To both of these comments, it's certainly possible, and
>the easy part is doing it in the LSB spec. The harder
>part is deciding what bits need to be exposed. And the
>implementation mostly depends on distributions, who not only
>have to add the provides, but have to make sure the internal
>components are sorted the right way based on them.
I've heard all the arguments about following rather than leading, but to
some extent we *need* to just say "this is what we *plan* to do, object
now or forever hold your peace".
If we say "the next version of the LSB will break up into a lot of
meta-packages unless we get any objections", then we've placed the
distros on notice that they need to get involved. If they don't, tough!
That's the way Linus runs the kernel - he lets people do what they think
is right, and he picks the best bits. But he's not averse to saying
"this is a pile of crap, this is the way I think it should be done", and
then he waits for the shit to hit the fan.
We need to say "we think this is the right way to do it", and wait for
the fallout. If nobody cares enough to object, then we just go ahead and
do it. If they do object, we tell them to come up with something better,
and if it is, we do as they suggest.
Cheers,
Wol
--
Anthony W. Youngman - anthony at thewolery.demon.co.uk
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