Re: Reducing installed package size
Philippe De Swert wrote:
> Recently playing with the localepurge package the following came up:
>
> Would it be a good idea to create similar packages that purge documentation,
> man pages, changelogs etc...?
>
> This would basically mean we have a simple system to remove all of this after
> install which gives us greater flexibility and removes the need to adapt the
> Debian build system. Also it allows for re-use in normal Debian or maybe
> Slind. It will definitely make it handier for people to have and maintain
> small Debian installations. Not having to remove all the unnecessary bloat by
> hand each time after an upgrade.
Just a opinion: Would it be possible to prevent dpkg writing these files
to the system at all? Think of flash devices, where write cycles are
expensive.
> The proposal consists of two packages:
>
> * doc purge : removes stuff from /usr/share/doc
> * man purge : removes stuff /usr/share/man (localepurge already removes
> localized ones, but it might be interesting to remove everything)
>
> Any comments or ideas on this?
I think this is reasonable, but I think this could break packages in
subtle ways. Is it mandated by policy that /usr/share/doc and
/usr/share/man may be deleted by the local admin without breaking
the 'essential functionality' of the package? (But honestly, I cannot
give an example for this right now. Perhaps some symlinks to some file
in /usr/share/doc/$package/examples)
Greetings,
Reinhard
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