Feeping Creaturism vs. Disk Space

[dhs@firefly.com (David H. Silber)]

I love nifty features on the programs I use.  (My shell at work is not bash,
and I hate it.)  I love the convenience of having man pages and info files
and examples loaded in with each Debian package.

I hate how few packages I can put on my system, due to disk space limitations.
All those man pages and info files and examples from the packages I already
have, prevent me from loading more packages on my system.

Sounds contradictory, doesn't it?  Actually, I have three Debian systems.
One (firefly) has a gigabyte drive.  One (aurora) has a 40 megabyte drive.
What I would like to see in some future version of dpkg is the ability to
block the installation of certain types of files on a per-system basis.  For
example, on aurora I could have a file /etc/dpkg/config, containing:
	prevent man
	prevent info
	prevent examples

The reason I bring this up now is the discussion on keeping extra dpkg
information.  Some people are concerned about the amount of space that this
information will occupy.  I can see both sides of the issue.  I really want
the repair facility to be as feature-full as possible, because that might
get me out of trouble some day.  On the other hand, I can't afford the extra
space on aurora.  Perhaps my hypothetical aurora:/etc/dpkg/config would
contain:
	prevent status

If we had this kind of configurability in dpkg, I think it would reduce the
contentiousness over this type of problem.  I think that it would also open
up the use of Debian to people with very limited systems.



P.S.  Some off-the-cuff reasons why someone might not want man pages, etc
on their Linux system:
	They have another system with all that stuff on it already.
	The system is intended to be used in some sort of embedded
		application, and so has minimal hardware.  (Say,
		as a router or terminal server.)

-- 
   David H. Silber     dhs@firefly.com     Project:  Debian GNU/Linux (uucp)
   <http://www.access.digex.net/~dhs/>     Wanted:  Spare time.