Hello, On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 04:45:07PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote: > On Mon 16 Nov 2020 at 04:12AM +01, Guillem Jover wrote: > > On Sat, 2020-11-07 at 13:30:13 -0700, Sean Whitton wrote: > >> Could I ask you to explain your wanting to reduce the Essential set for > >> the sake of small installation size in more detail, including some > >> numbers, please? It would be good to get to the bottom of Bill's worry > >> about this change, but in addition, I would like to see a stronger > >> positive case. > > > > I'm not sure about Josh, but I think the main reasons for wanting to > > reduce the essential set are: > > > > - Making chroots/containers slimmer, which can have a substantial > > impact when needing lots of them, where even few MiB can make a > > difference. > > - Making bootstrapping (build and installation) in general easier, > > even though for the former these packages also need to then > > be ideally removed from the build-essential set too. > > Thank you for this, but I was hoping for some more specifics. For > example, what are some examples of large Essential: yes packages that > might actually, in practice, be removable?
util-linux is, I believe, in this situation. A lot of systems do not actually need *anything* from util-linux. Yet is is Essential: yes, and because of the large set of programs in it, removing the Essential flag on it will be extremely painful. Even more so when other packages cannot depend on it for an orderly transition. ~5MB installed, give or take for libraries which may also become removable. Chris
