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Bug#497304: general: packages cannot be partially installed



Mark Hobley wrote:
> For any particular package, the full set of binary components, optional
> documentation, and unused foreign language support files will be installed
> by the package management system.
You are not right, general. Packages are often splitted.

> A fix would be to make it possible to select individual files for 
> installation from within a package.
... and allow user or admin to break whole system by selecting half of coreutils and 2/3
files of dpkg. Great.

> Other work includes splitting packages into daughter packages, the 
> parent package being dependent on all daughters, but allowing the option 
> of just selecting individual daughter packages,
> 
> eg: coreutils depends on coreutils-fileutils and
> coreutils-fileutils depends on coreutils-fileutils-head, 
> coreutils-fileutils-split
$ dpkg -L coreutils | grep bin | wc -l
99
And you suggest package all these binaries individually? Did you think about size of dpkg
and apt databases, if you tell about embedded systems?

> It is policy that internationalized (non-english) components are 
> packaged separately to the core package. For example, a package foobar, 
> would have its french documentation in a separate foobar-fr package.
Please, have a look on repository and wonder. If some package bundles _big_ piece of stuff
all-at-one, you should file a wishlist bug against this package, not general.

> Packages should not install cruft on the system. This means that a 
> package should not install a foreign language file, unless the system 
> has been explicitly configured to support that foreign language.
So, If I need Japanese support in browser I have to install all available Japanese stuff
related to other thousand of packages?

I have almost no doubt this report should be marked 'wontfix'.

-- 
Eugene V. Lyubimkin aka JackYF, Ukrainian C++ developer.

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