Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop
On Thu 03 Jul 2025 at 18:15:42 (+0200), Federico Kircheis wrote:
> On 03/07/2025 5:28 pm, Dan Ritter wrote:
> > Federico Kircheis wrote:
> > > And this also holds for metapackages like lxqt.
> > > It still installs a lot of things, so down to lxqt-core.
> > > It still installs some things I've noticed and to not want, so I need to
> > > inspect which packages are installed, transitive dependencies included..
> > >
> > > I hoped it would have been possible to exclude dependencies, for example by
> > > prefixing them with "-"; for example:
No, you don't want to exclude dependencies; doing that will break
packages. That's why they're call dependencies: the package depends
on them being installed.
> > > "apt install lxqt -meteo-qt"
meteo-qt is not a dependency: it's only recommended.
> On 03/07/2025 5:51 pm, Greg wrote:
> > I'm only aware of '--no-install-recommends' as far as apt goes.
>
> Yes, but it has the same issue.
> Now many things are missing, and I need to search them out, and
> dependencies might change between package releases.
Except that it reverses the logic: --no-install-recommends will
install the packages you ask for, but with minimal extra packages.
When you find that some expected functionality is absent, you
install the package that gives you that functionality, again
with --no-install-recommends to keep your system minimal.
"Now many things are missing":
Well, you can hardly expect the Debian or the DE developers to guess
which functions happen to be the ones that you want.
"and I need to search them out":
Hardly onerous: the package names are likely to be in the Recommends
list of the top-level package you installed.
> But if I list all packages, then remove all those that I obviously do
> not need, and write a script that install only those, it might "break"
> when some packages are updated or new dependencies are added.
> With the blacklist approach, I expected it would break only if the
> package is now required.
If your "blacklist" system causes breakages, then you can hardly
expect Debian developers to give it any consideration at all.
> * downloading and uploading unnecessary data not only takes space on
> my drive, but also takes more time and unnecessarily consumes my
> traffic plan.
> * offsite backups take longer, as verifying they integrity and
> restore process
Those are reasons why --no-install-recommends was provided in the
first place.
> I'm not necessarily talking about the .deb file by
> itself, but also docker images, iso files, virtual machines, and so
> on, which are built on top of installed deb packages.
That's a separate concern, and in your hands.
> * a system with more dependencies has a higher chance to break than a
> system with less dependencies when upgrading components
> And I'm sure I can find other reason why avoiding some unnecessary
> dependencies has positive side-effects
Again, you're confusing the issue by using the wrong terminology.
APT makes sure that dependencies are satisfied. If an extra dependency
is added (rare), it gets installed.¹ If an extra Recommends is added,
you might not even notice the fact when --no-install-recommends is in
force: and if it were to be undesirable, you wouldn't have to do
anything about eliminating it, like blacklisting it.
¹ apt-get users might require dist-upgrade or --with-new-pkgs when
this happens.
Cheers,
David.
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