[Fedora-livecd-list] mandatory syslinux on live cd causes perl dependency

[Mads Kiilerich]

On 03/02/2010 11:34 PM, James Heather wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 20:03 +0000, Mads Kiilerich wrote:
>> python-imgcreate adds syslinux to the list of installed packages.
>> AFAICS that is because it uses data files from syslinux in the
>> installed root to populate isolinux. It do not execute any syslinux
>> files in the installed root.
>>
>> The problem is that syslinux depends on perl. The unused syslinux
>> on the livecd is the only reason my live cd has perl, and it thus
>> costs 30+ Mb.
>>
>> How do you think that could be solved / worked around?
>>
>> Could python-imgcreate be changed to use files from the build
>> system if they can't be found in the installed root?
>>
>> Or could syslinux be split into a executable package depending on
>> perl and a /usr/share/syslinux package?
>
> I haven't tried this, but how about:
>
> %post yum -C -y remove perl %end

Yes, that would remove perl, but it will not remove whatever
dependencies has been installed because of it. So I will have to
enumerate these packages or use package-cleanup.

> As I recall, by the time %post executes, the initrd has already been
> created (see previous posts passim.). If syslinux data files are
> being used in that stage, then removing them in %post shouldn't screw
> things up. If they're being used after the squashfs image gets
> created, you might be in trouble.

I wasn't sure that the syslinux files from the installed root was
extracted before %post (when the initrd was built). But now I have
convinced myself that that is how it has to be and how it is.

So yes, thank you, that is perhaps the workaround I asked for. But I had 
hoped to find something prettier than that ... ;-)

/Mads