[Fedora-packaging] Question regarding split of packages

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 01/11/2012 10:20 AM, Matthias Runge wrote:
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> On 10/01/12 12:10, Simone Caronni wrote:
>> Hello,
> I just stumbled upon this:
>
> the plan is to separate the bacula-docs subpackage from bacula package
> and create a new package bacula-docs.
> (review request at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=771941 )
>
> My question is, is the split possible in existing trees, e.g in F16?
When carefully done, yes. The minimum requirement would be such a change 
to be "100% transparent to users within a Fedora release".

IMO, however, the better question would be "why to split out docs?".

In general, separate doc packages make sense in cases they are "very 
large" or in case the docs are "mostly irrelevant" to users (i.e. hardly 
anybody will want to read/install them).

In all other cases separate doc packages do not add many benefits but 
only add packaging complexity (esp. dependencies) and add sources of 
potential bugs.

I am not familiar with your package to be able to comment on your 
particular case.

Ralf