Shrinking/splitting up core Was: Why are there only i686 and i586 Version of glibc...

[Crutcher Dunnavant]

On Sun, 6 Jun 2004 15:23:41 -0400, Willem Riede <wrrhdev at riede.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 2004.06.06 15:05, Tom Diehl wrote:
> > On Sun, 6 Jun 2004, Crutcher Dunnavant wrote:
> >
> > > I think that perhaps, "Core" and "Extras" is insufficiently fine
> > > grained. There is value in a truly small distro, one small enough
> > > that, while it contains everything needed to run itself, it does not
> > > contain the tools needed to build itself. Think PVRs, Routers,
> > > MyRoboticDog, etc.
> > >
> > > Since these packages are to be built in a common space, it's really
> > > just an issue of which repository the RPMS get dropped into after they
> > > are built. I'd rather see something like, in staggered order of
> > > dependancy:
> > >
> > > Core - (no, really, CORE. No X, no gcc, just the hard base.)
> > > Desktop
> > > Development
> > > Multimedia
> > > Extras
> >
> > I really like this idea, but wouldn't it be a maintenance nightmare?
> >
> > What I am thinking about specifically is how do you handle the stuff that
> > fits into more than 1 category? Is that automatically part of core?
> > Do you suggest that anaconda only know how to install core and everything
> > else is done post install? I am sure there are other cases to be thought
> > about. Wouldn't all of the categories need to be tested together to ensure
> > compatibility? This subject comes up again and again but seems to be about
> > as far as it goes. Then again once the Red Hat/Fedora infrastructure to
> > allow external contribution's is finally up and running things might
> > progress.
> 
> How would that work with respect to upgrades? Haven't we had cases where glibc
> needed to be upgraded and that change affected virtually all applications?
> With a monolithic distribution that is pretty painless, compatible versions
> are available and replace their ancestors.
> 

If you had installed Core, then you would subscribe to only the Core
repository. If you had installed Desktop, you would subscribe to the
Core repo, and the Desktop repo, etc. Desktop would NOT be a supperset
of Core, it would be a repo in Addition To Core.
-- 
Crutcher