rawhide report: 20050121 changes

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 11:50:40 -0400, mbneto <mbneto at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that one of the problems is the dependency issue.   I've been
> using RedHat/Fedora since RH 3 and one thing that makes me sad is that
> every other distro seems to have a "minimum/firewall like" install and
> the 'minimum' install for fcX is 700Mb...

This comes up frequently, and i pretty much say the same thing
everytime. So everyone whose seen my rant about this before.. just hit
delete now.

What is installed in a minimal install is controlled to a great extent
by the comps.xml file that defines the groupings of packages. A
community of interested users  could easily play with rearranging the
comps.xml file and produce an alternative minimal install to test and
refine. Its not difficult to recreate installable iso images that use
a different comps.xml file.    The fact is making minimal more minimal
is a low priority issue for the current developers. Developers have
finite time and you can't blame them for having a set or priorities. 
But this issue is something willing and motivated community could hack
at and experiment with in parallel while Core development continues.

Once the community has a comps.xml that impliments a smaller minimal
install without impacting the desktop or workstation install types...
it could be presented for review and consideration.  But its going to
take non-zero work from people who is motivated to making the minimal
install smaller.   The sooner people in the community who are
interestied start poking at editing the comps.xml file anaconda
uses... the sooner interested people can test the changes.

Some people in the community have been focusing on creating a smaller
minimal install by using externally defined kickstart files. But if
you want anaconda's native 'minimal' install to be smaller.. people
will have to start poking at the comps.xml file anaconda uses to see
if things can be reorganized.


-jef