Trimming down the package set

[Stephen Gallagher]

So, at DevConf over the weekend, I had a conversation with several
people around the package set that we should include on the Fedora
Server install media in Fedora 22.

When we put together the install media for Fedora 21, we basically took
the old Fedora 20 DVD install and stripped out some of the things we
didn't feel were necessary for the Server. However, I suspect that we
may have missed numerous things that are not *strictly* important for
Server.

In particular, the Fedora Server DVD includes the package groups for
many of the Fedora development tools (particularly those useful for
developing Fedora *itself*, such as the @fedora-packager group.

I don't currently have statistics on how much space this would save on
the installation DVD (since I would pretty much have to build one
without these packages to verify it), but I can get an approximate idea
of the difference by installing the minimal set of Server packages on
one VM and a set that includes the devel packages on another.

The result I see is:
== Standard Server Install ==
* 614 packages
* 1,097 MB on the installed system

== Server Install Plus Development Tools ==
* 716 packages
* 1496 MB on the installed system.

Even if we assume a (very) generous assumption that the RPM compression
reduces the size difference by 50%, we still see a probable savings of
200 MB on the install DVD.

So, my questions to the Server SIG:
1) Is this savings in the DVD ISO download size sufficiently significant
to continue this conversation?
2) Does anyone see any value in keeping this material *on the DVD*?
Obviously, all of these packages will remain available to the network
install or post-installation environments.



For those who are interested in minutiae, I am attaching the current
fedora-install-server.ks file that is used to generate the DVD. If you
see anything else there that might be worth including in this
discussion, I'm all ears.