Re: pocketworkstation.org (Debian on Handhelds) 0.17 update

[Klaus Weidner <klaus@atsec.com>]

On Sun, Apr 04, 2004 at 05:32:41PM -0500, Klaus Weidner wrote:
> - upgrade to current Debian sarge/testing (this has increased the size
>   quite a bit due to extra dependencies)

Here's some more info about this.

One problem is the following dependency chain:

  xlibs => libxft1 => libfontconfig1 => fontconfig
  => defoma => perl => perl-modules

This means that any kind of X11 installation will automatically pull in
the full 22MB Perl installation, even though for most purposes the
perl-base install would be sufficient.

Also, fontconfig *insists* on installing extra fonts. The
ttf-bitstream-vera package isn't very big, but I'd like to have a choice
for a handheld system:

  Depends: .., ttf-bitstream-vera | ttf-freefont | gsfonts-x11 | msttcorefonts

Shouldn't this be weakened to a "Recommends:" instead?

In the "stable" release, it was still possible to do an X11 install using
only the bitmapped fonts, and I was able to build a "base" distribution
in <64MB. Now I need at least 90MB, even after manually deleting extras.

Note that "xbase-clients" also depends on fontconfig and OpenGL
libraries. I've worked around the OpenGL package via a fake libgl1
package (using equivs), but I've given up on the font issue.

BTW, are there any updates planned for the unstable Opie packages? The
last snapshot is over a year old, and it would be a nice alternative to
the X11 platform.

-Klaus