Re: What about /usr/share/locale. Was: Re: Packaging _still_ wasteful for many large packages
Hi Mike!
cheako911@yahoo.com (Mike Mestnik) writes:
> On my sparc it's 80MB, that's a whole hard drive if you ask me and 80MB
> hard drive! Most of these files I will NOT EVER USE. I was wondering if
> I can just rm them or if there will be a debian pkg|debconf for cleaning
> this up?
>
I developed the package localepurge for almost the same reason a few
years ago and with further input by other users it has become quite
useful. This should partly do the trick for you although there are
still other space consuming unnecessary files (e.g. KDE and GNOME
localized help files) left over which should be taken care of by
someone. Here's the package description:
---------- snip -------------
Package: localepurge
Version: 0.0.59
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Maintainer: Paul Seelig <pseelig@debian.org>
Depends: dpkg (>= 1.9.7), debconf (>= 0.5.00), debianutils (>= 1.6)
Conflicts: apt-localepurge
Replaces: apt-localepurge
Architecture: all
Filename: ./localepurge_0.0.59_all.deb
Size: 24258
Installed-Size: 64
MD5sum: c09aa99467ba42332a39b447fd9332a7
Description: Automagically removing unnecessary locale data
This is just a simple script to recover diskspace wasted for unneeded
locale files and localized man pages. It will automagically be invoked
upon completion of any apt installation run.
.
Please note, that this tool is a hack which is *not* integrated with
Debian's package management system and therefore is not for the faint
of heart. This program interferes with the Debian package management
and does provoke strange, but usually harmless, behaviour of programs
related with apt/dpkg like dpkg-repack, debsums, reportbug, etc.
Responsibility for its usage and possible breakage of your system
therefore lies in the sysadmin's (your) hands.
.
Please definitely do abstain from reporting any such bugs blaming
localepurge if you break your system by using it. If you don't know
what you are doing and can't handle any resulting breakage on your own
then please simply don't use this package.
---------- snip -------------
Just be aware that some system related utilities (reportbug, debsums,
etc.) might get confused when files which are expected to be present
are unexpectedly absent. But this is usually harmless and easy to
circumvent by any apt sysadmin if at all necessary.
It would be far better, if not ideal, if it were possible to exclude
package components via apt/dpkg already at install time so that
localepurge could simply go away. If i'm not mistaken there are (still
very) experimental patches for apt/dpkg to care about this.
Hope this helps, P. *8^)
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