[Fedora-livecd-list] Trimming the size of LiveCD's

[Douglas McClendon]

Jeremy Katz wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-08-31 at 10:24 +0200, Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
>> Here's a thought:
>>
>> 1304 random packages will install 724 MB of data in /usr/share/doc
>>
>> I'm sure there is /something/ to gain here. If every package on average
>> installs ~0.5 MB of docs... Would it worth figuring out what docs should
>> be on the LiveCD in the first place? I guess removing everything RPM
>> calls docs is too much, as this will include man-pages as well.
>>
>> Any thoughts?
> 
> If the live images weren't installable?  Sure.  Since they are, though,
> you're trading off a little space in the short-term[1] for hurting every
> user in the long-term.  Because they a) won't have the docs if they want
> them b) won't be able to use deltarpms[2] c) make the system look hacked
> by rpm -V not working, ...

preface: I'm not arguing for doing this sort of thing in F8 or F9 even.

But as mentioned, creating a post install tool that with one 
button/commandline fetches all the missing stuff is trivial.  After 
which deltarpms works.  And for (c), rpm -V will work, it will just show 
missing files.  Out of curiosity, can you provide me an example where if 
I did rpm -V on all the rpms of my system, and all I saw was missing 
files, that I should be worried about my system being hacked?  I just 
honestly am curious.  (I'm guessing that I could come up with an example 
if I really thought about it, but nothing springs to mind immediately).


> 
> It's really just not a good idea for the official images.  That said,
> anyone who wants to for their own unofficial live images that they build
> for whatever reason is more than welcome to have "rm
> -rf /usr/share/doc/*"[3] in their %post.
> 
> The _better_ thing to do is to actually look at what's being installed
> as docs and then figure out some improved packaging policy and see about
> not shipping some of it.  eg, I'm not sure it makes sense to ship the
> ChangeLogs in general, either for the live CD or a regular system.  But
> I suspect that to be somewhat controversial.

I think it is only controversial for the precise reason we are debating 
it.  I.e. in any system that isn't constrained to 700MB, you really 
ought to go ahead and throw the full changelogs in, because the 
cost/benefit in that situation dictates that choice.  Whereas in the 
livecd case, the cost/benefit dictates the opposite choice.

-dmc