Re: Su && Development Packages
Quoting Bart Szyszka (bart@gigabee.com):
>
> > *ridiculous* (your word) to download all the development packages in
> > Debian (grep-available lists 358 here) on the off-chance that someday
> > they might want to compile code for a Beowulf cluster or a voxel
> > renderer or what have you. You don't install everything: this is what
> > dependencies are all about, and people writing their own software are
> > expected to be intelligent enough to figure out what they need (see my
> > next paragraph before you blow up).
> Well Linux people tend to make too many assumptions about what the
> user has on their system. I'd imagine it to be more likely with developers
> who assume people are installing packaged versions that automatically
> installs a basic set of development packages.
I'm very guilty of making that sort of assumption. I don't use
the package selection mechanism as I was quite happy without it
and know what I want.
I've always just allowed dselect to run one time (upon installation)
with its default list of packages, and then built up from there with
dpkg (and nowadays apt).
The installation default gives you enough development packages to
have compiling a kernel, modules and C programs. And yet there are
many people out there who don't even allow this set of
Important/Standard packages to be installed on their system.
Looking ahead in this thread to the list given by Oki DZ:
>Let's see: make, gcc, binutils, cpio, bin86, libc6, libc6-dev, bzip2,
>kernel-source-2.2.13, kernel-headers-2.2.13, libncurses4, libncurses4-dev,
>ncurses-base, ncurses-bin, ncurses3.4, m4.
All these are installed onto my slink system at the first pass
except bzip2 and of course the kernel stuff where one would want to
choose which one to get.
> > Eventually (for woody, I believe) all packages will have to have
> > Build-Depends: fields to pull in specialist development packages; in
> > fact, this is in the current version of policy.
> OK, but what about the software that isn't put up on Debian's site?
The Debian packaging system and the tracking of binary-dependencies
are major achievements, and thanks to the developers for all that work.
AIUI they're now working on a similar system for source-dependencies.
When it all becomes available, I hope people say more than "OK but".
> > You don't know much about development, do you? At least not if you mean
> > "any program" as opposed to "any Debian source package".
> I meant *most* programs. Just like the boxed sets of Linux will install
> the packages you need for compiling most programs.
Oh yes, it's dead easy to throw a bundle of development tools together
and say "install that". It's much harder to say "to compile this, you
need this and this and this". Debian allows one to take the clinical-zap
approach rather than the bloatware-blunderbuss, at least for its own
packages. It's not clear that you can ever do this for tarballs without
the author's cooperation.
Cheers,
--
Email: d.wright@open.ac.uk Tel: +44 1908 653 739 Fax: +44 1908 655 151
Snail: David Wright, Earth Science Dept., Milton Keynes, England, MK7 6AA
Disclaimer: These addresses are only for reaching me, and do not signify
official stationery. Views expressed here are either my own or plagiarised.
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