RFC: groff split (was Re: Packaging WM themes - question)

[cjw44@flatline.org.uk (Colin Watson)]

brian@debian.org (Brian Mays) wrote:
>neuffer@sciobyte.de (Michael Neuffer) emphatically replied:
>> Go, ask some of the other old-timers on debian-devel that still        
>> remember the old flamewars with Bruce where this was a topic as well, 
>> what they think.                                                      
>
>This is true.  Ian Jackson used to refer to this phenomenon as "package
>fragmentation," and he noticed it early on.  As I recall, he complained
>when I tried to pull GNU mt out of cpio and into its own package.  After
>considering his arguments, I realized that he was right, and GNU mt is
>still packaged with cpio.
>
>> Ben: It might make sense to split it into 2 or 3 packages but 
>> certainly not more.
>
>I agree.  Consider the following when making these decisions:
>
>(1) Does the entire set of software come from one source?
>
>(2) Is the entire upstream source packaged and updated together?
>
>(3) Does everything work together or provide the same utility or
>service?
>
>If the answer to all of the above questions is "yes," then everything
>should be placed in one package.

In that case, I should ask for opinions about groff, which I'm about to
adopt. The package has to be divided no matter what; gxditview depends
on X, and can't be in an important-priority package. groff itself is
really just in the base system because it's needed to read man pages, so
my intent (largely implemented, but unreleased) has been to generate
three binary packages:

  groff-base: Basic package containing binaries, fonts, and drivers
              needed to read man pages in ASCII/Latin-1/UTF-8.
  groff:      Most of the other optional components - DVI, PostScript,
              and HTML output, etc., various random tools, the large
              Japanese fonts, and documentation.
  gxditview:  The gxditview program, the only bit that depends on X.

groff-base is about 1Mb installed; groff weighs in at somewhat over 5Mb;
gxditview is about 100Kb. Since groff will be priority optional, I could
be persuaded to ship gxditview with that if people don't mind the
dependencies on libxaw7 and xlibs.

Comments?

-- 
Colin Watson                                     [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]