what it takes to unbundle, in triangle form

[Andrew Haley]

On 10/08/2015 08:08 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 08, 2015 at 03:37:32PM +0100, Andrew Haley wrote:
>> Maybe we're trying to do too much.
>>
>> I suppose it's a question of choosing to do something which from a
>> software engineering perspective is not the best practice or not
>> including a package at all. I'd certainly prefer to see a somewhat
>> smaller well-engineered system than open the doors to packages with
>> their own versions of dependencies, each with their own set of bugs.
> 
> The thing is, this is only one aspect of the quality of the packaging —
> and let alone bugs and problems in the code itself, which are usually
> even bigger in terms of user impact. So, making *this* particular facet
> the deciding factor doesn't quite seem right to me.

Me either, but of course I didn't say that.  IMO it's necessary but
not sufficient.

> I think the *general* idea, of having a smaller-well engineered core is
> a good one. It's just.... really hard to define exactly what that is,
> let alone to do the practical work of untangling dependencies. But
> that's basically what the "Fedora Modularization" initiative is all
> about.

I accept that point.

> From an unrelated practical point of view: consider that the metadata
> pulled down so DNF can operate is basically the same size as the entire
> (compressed) Fedora Cloud Base image. It'd be very nice to not have
> that overhead (but still have wider package set available when you want
> it).

It certainly would, but fixing the DNF metadata problem is a whole 'nother
ball of wax!

Andrew.