Re: diffoscope dependency granularity [was RFC: "Recommended bloat", and how to possibly fix it]
Fay Stegerman <flx@obfusk.net> writes:
> [Added diffoscope@lists.reproducible-builds.org to Cc]
>
> * Fay Stegerman <flx@obfusk.net> [2024-11-06 17:43]:
>> * Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> [2024-11-06 02:28]:
>> [...]
>> > Have one package diffoscope and one package diffoscope-full and you could even
>> > have a package diffoscope-minimal and there you have user-selectable
>> > granularity.
>>
>> We already have two diffoscope packages for exactly this reason (I work on
>> diffoscope and only have -minimal installed myself):
>>
>> $ apt-cache show diffoscope/sid | grep -A1 full
>> This is a dependency package that recommends the full set of external tools,
>> to support as many type of files as possible.
>>
>> $ apt-cache show diffoscope-minimal/sid | grep -A2 partial
>> This -minimal package only recommends a partial set of the supported 3rd party
>> tools needed to produce file-format-specific comparisons, excluding those that
>> are considered too large or niche for general use.
>
> IMO in the case of diffoscope it could make sense to have multiple tools
> metapackages, like a diffoscope-tools-android etc., to both make it easier to
> avoid those dependencies if you know you don't need them, but also to easily
> install the dependencies for the file formats you do work with.
I think even diffoscope-minimal pulls in too much - all i wanted was a
better version of debdiff, but diffoscope-minimal recommends things like
openssl, openssh-client, r-base-core which seem well beyong "minimal" --
but you cant just purge all its recommends as some (like xz-utils) are
needed for other reasons.
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