Re: Please, minimize your build chroots

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@debian.org>]

El 16/12/22 a las 18:55, Andreas Metzler escribió:
> I am wondering if there is point to this or whether policy should be
> changed? Is there some value in investing work in having packages
> buildable without Prioriry required packages?

I'd like to apologize to Andreas for my previous answer, as I believe
there has been a misunderstanding.

There are actually two meanings for "required package". One of them
is "packages having the 'required' value in the priority field of the
control file". The other meaning is the one you quote in policy, i.e.
packages which may make your system become broken when you remove them.

I propose that we remove certain packages from chroots, packages which
currently have the priority required in the control field, because they
are not needed for building.

Whether that requires to modify the definition of required in policy,
I don't know.

I think we definitely need to decouple "the set of required packages" with
"the set of packages needed for building", because they are different
and none of them is a proper subset of the other. For example,
we already don't install a kernel or an init system in a chroot used for
building.

Thanks.