[Base] Proposal for buildrequires cleanup janitorial initiative

[Miloslav Trmač]

On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 11:10 PM, Colin Walters <walters at verbum.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2013-12-12 at 18:50 +0100, Phil Knirsch wrote:
>> Hi everyone.
>>
>> During last weeks Base WG discussion about package set and self hosting
>> of Base we came to a point where especially the self hosting of Base
>> would currently look absurd as we'd require more than 2000 components to
>> do so.
>
> Once you reduce the size of this set, do you forsee actually *enforcing*
> this in some way?  For example, by having separate package repositories?
>
> If not, what's the point of this initiative?

Actually, even more generally - why a self-hosting Base at all?  It
would clearly be absurd for the kernel to be self-hosting, and clearly
we want "the Fedora universe" to be self-hosting.  Why is it
worthwhile to have Base self-hosting?  I wouldn't expect Server or
Cloud to be necessarily self-hosting either (personal opinion, not
speaking for any of the WGs).  (And being nitpicky, will Base include
Koji and all the databases and web servers necessary to run it?)

It seems to me that if a complex,
Java-and-Erlang-and-Haskel-and-postgresql-and-Mongo-using piece of
software could be integrated into the build process of Base to make
the final output better (say, by making static analysis a part of each
build), it should be possible.

The only reason for a small self-hosting base I can think of is
bootstrapping a new architecture, but that's a special and rare case
AFAICT.

What benefits am I missing?
   Mirek