Proposal: Drop comps

[Stephen Gallagher]

On Tue, 2015-07-14 at 10:13 +0200, Vít Ondruch wrote:
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> Can we just drop comps entirely (or at least trim them down 
> significantly)? I know that this will not happen from day to day, but 
> I see the comps just as an ugly workaround for missing weak 
> dependencies, which we have now.
> 


Comps has been used for this purpose sure (using the grouping mechanism
to specify optional packages in addition to critical ones). There are
other uses for comps that you're ignoring, though.

 * Anaconda relies on comps.xml environment groups to provide the
selection of which system to install on all network-install media.

 * The comps.xml groups also provide grouping for logically-connected
packages that do not map to weak dependencies well. (For example: an
"astronomy" group could pull in numerous scientific packages related to
astronomy)

I don't think there's any sense in removing comps.xml entirely, though
I'll be the first to say that it would be great if someone went through
and cleaned it up a bit. There's a lot of old cruft around. If someone
is interested in doing that in Rawhide after the F23 branch is
completed, that would be fantastic.
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