[Base] Summary/Minutes from today's Base WG meeting (2013-11-08)

[Matthias Clasen]

On Fri, 2013-11-08 at 10:51 -0600, Dennis Gilmore wrote:

>   * LINK: http://fpaste.org/52688/38392758/   (pknirsch, 16:19:54)
>   * Base definition: installer, compose tools, minimal install (for some
>     definition there), and functionality the majority products want to
>     use  (pknirsch, 16:21:30)
> 

Hey, I read your minutes, and discussed some of my thoughts on this with
my workstation wg peers. Basically, I think that defining a 'base' as a
particular set of packages (minimal install, or some variant thereof)
does not really provide us what we need to build one or more products.'

What we really need as a base is a definition of the apis that are
guaranteed to be stable and that the products and applications can rely
on. Packages can to some extent serve as a proxy for that, but they are
really just an implementation detail of how the product is put
together. 

For example, when you talk about an OS being systemd-based, the
important part is not that systemd is part of the minimal install, but
the fact that applications can rely on org.freedesktop.login1 and so on
being available on the session bus, and that installing a unit file
in /usr/lib/systemd/system is the proper way to make a service known to
the system, etc.

There will of course be APIs that are product-specific. Eg, the server
product might define a remote management api that is not relevant for a
workstation. And desktop applications running on the workstation need to
know which session services they can rely on.


Just my 2 cents, Matthias