[Debian-olpc-devel] Dependancies.... seem to be awful lot.

[Jonas Smedegaard]

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Hi Simon (and others),

No need to adress me directly - I am subscribed to both lists.

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 10:15:14PM -0500, simon at mungewell.org wrote:
>> 1) You are right, sugar does not _need_ CUPS. Sugar either needs or 
>> recommends other stuff (like dbus and abiword) which then recommends 
>> a slew of GNOME packages and CUPS.
>
>It seems the main culprit is python-gnome2-desktop which pulls in a 
>whole load of gnome dependencies, only some of which I presume are 
>needed.

Ah, yes. I remember now: Sugar needs the SVG parser from that package - 
I agree that it is annoying that it pulls in the whole world.

Please someone (you?) help out here: file a bugreport against that 
package, proposing to split it into smaller pieces.


>> 2) The package "sugar" does not represent the whole sugar 
>> environment, but only the specific software package called "sugar".
>
>True, but an install of 'sugar' will give you a sugar system to which 
>you can bring activities packages (either with apt-get, download or via 
>USB key).

Nope. The package "sugar" only recommends things like network-manager 
and sugar-artwork that is needed for a working Sugar environment but not 
strictly by that package itself.

It might make sense (again, when all is packaged officially) to offer a 
metapackage "glucose" (in addition to "fructose" described below), which 
will provide what you describe.

See http://sugarlabs.org/go/Taxonomy for more info on these terms.


>> If you use "aptitude --without-recommends" then you'll see what is 
>> strictly _needed_ by the sugar package, wihtout pulling in stuff that 
>> is only recommended.
>
>OK that gets some stuff out, but there is still a fair amount of cruft 
>(libcdparanoia surely isn't required for example).

Well, libcdparanoia does not consume vast amounts of disk space :-)

I believe it is pulled in by gstreamer, being part of its "essential 
exemplary set of elements". Which means that even if indeed Sugar does 
not need it, it needs gstreamer, and gstreamer considers it essential.

In other words: If you want a truly minimal set of dependencies, you 
need to look elsewhere than Debian and its derivatives: the package 
dependencies are targeted at alround use, not specificall for Sugar use.


>I found the application apt-rdepends quite informative.

Yes, that one is useful.

Personally I use the fullscreen interface of aptitude (just invoke 
"aptitude" without any trailing sub-command).


>> There is currently no package representing "the sugar environment". 
>> When all needed parts are packaged officially for Debian, I intend to 
>> provide a metapackage "fructose" that will depend on all packages 
>> needed (and possibly recommend other packages, that you may avoid 
>> installing using above mentioned aptitude option).
>>
>
>I appreciate that it is hard to slim down completely (and also the work 
>that you have put into the project). I'm not meaning to be critical, I 
>was just rather suprised just how much was going to be added to a 
>130MByte base install/live-CD.

Criticism is great, as long as it is constructive - as yours is! :-)

Please do criticise more!


  - Jonas


- -- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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