Re: contents of the first sarge CD image

[Josip Rodin <joy@srce.hr>]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 08:40:20AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > I burned a sarge-i386-1.iso the other day using Jigdo from gluck.
> > Who/what decides what packages go onto it?
> 
> It's a complex algorithm. :) Basically, just check tasks/Debian_sarge
> as a starting point.
> 
> We try to include on the first CD all packages listed in a "Task"
> (tasks/task-essential-sarge, tasks/task-full-sarge), all
> packages required by debootstrap (tasks/base-sarge), 
> and generally speaking the most common packages (as defined by the
> popularity contest, tasks/popularity-contest-sarge).
> 
> On the other hand we have an exclude mechanism because some packages
> get included for other reasons (standard priority for example) and we
> don't want them on the first CD (tasks/exclude-sarge) but they may
> be reintegrated somewhere else (tasks/unexclude-CD2-sarge). Those two
> "features" need some specific environment variables set at build time
> and thus those files may have been not used to build the sarge image
> available ...
> 
> We also have a custom "must-have" list: tasks/forcd1

So atlas2* gets in because it's in some scientific task package, is that
what you're saying? And aterm, powershell, original-awk...? None of those
are nearly as popular as those three things I mentioned (standard popcon
disclaimers apply), and yet they all got onto the first CD.

And judging by what you are saying, some of those things are simply buggy.
The exclude file tries to kill off a lot of the aspell-* packages and fails:

1228 aspell-br
4328 aspell-en
9244 aspell-cy
12832 aspell-de
14608 aspell-da
17220 aspell-el
28612 aspell-bg

Whereas, there's no kernel-source for 2.4 on the first CD. I mean, how could
it possibly fit... :o)

Also there are some real gems on the first CD:

87956 xserver-xfree86-dbg
15440 kernel-source-2.2.20
5427 syslinux
6744 python2.2
5148 python2.1
5012 xspecs
3718 stl-manual
3364 zmailer
3056 xvfb
3012 multi-gnome-terminal-doc
1424 smail

(the point with python* is that there shouldn't be two of them, of course)
(and yes, I realize that _some_ of the above is in tasks, but still)

I got bored at this point... but there's smaller stuff that's so amazingly
niche that I'm almost impressed, like "cronosii", "cmail" or "vserver", just
to name a few.

Note also that the popularity-contest data in CVS is 9 months old.

-- 
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.

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