Re: [RFC] apt-localepurge - automagically removing unnecessary locale files
> > I've seen this being proposed all the time, but... would be adviseable to
> > have such a feature? I mean, giving the end user the power to remove files
> > from packages by using regex?
> >
> > Wouldn't it be more logical to have some way to tag files, and dpkg would
> > remove files that contain (or lacks) a tag.
> >
> > E.g.:
> >
> > Package: supergame
> >
> > /var/lib/dpkg/info/supergame.tags:
> > -----------------------------------------------
> > /usr/lib/supergame/logo.fr.gif locale-fr
> > /usr/lib/supergame/logo.es.gif locale-es
>
> In an actual package, of course, these should go in /usr/share,
> as /usr/share is for architecture-independent files (like gifs) and
> /usr/lib is for libraries and internal binaries.
>
> > /usr/share/locale/fr/supergame.mo locale-fr
> > /usr/share/locale/es/supergame.mo locale-es
> > /usr/share/doc/supergame/manual/.* documentation
>
> Okay. A classic example is letting the /usr/share data be shared
> among different computers running Debian on different architectures.
> You can't do that in this example. Either you add a specific tag, or
> you make /usr/share an exception. But then you have someone who
> wants to share /usr among different computers. So you add a specific
> tag, or you make /usr an exception. And then you find someone else
> with another special need.
Debian does not support file sharing in any way. We changed to using
/usr/share to follow standards external to Debian.
> Tags is not a bad idea; it would be nice to be able to pick up all
> the locale data spread over the disk this way. But I don't think
> it's exclusive with letting the users exclude files, and I find the
> raw power of user-exclusion to be more attractive than fixing up
> 4000 packages for a less flexible (albeit more user-friendly)
> result.
But this is what we do. Lots of minor tweaking in each package to provide a
consistent and nice UNIX experience. This is a higher level way to do the
same. I think that raw power should only be offered as a last resort. If
there's a managed way to do something, that can be configured, it's better.
Besides, if the 20% of the package which we install 80% of the time adopt
this scheme it would provide enough hapiness to all who want to exclude
these files.
Reply to: