Dependencies of meta-pkgs/gnome [was Re: Adding a gnome-lite package]

[Julio Merino <jmmv84%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 9:22 AM, David DEMELIER
<demelier.david%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
> I agree because the meta-pkgs/gnome has too many dependencies not
> related to the Gnome desktop. So please remove everything and just add
> needed libs.

Well, that's a separate discussion -- hence why I'm changing the topic.

The Gnome Project defines several official components.  If you go to
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/, you can see a list of these
components, which include: admin, bindings, desktop, devtools, mobile
and platform.  (Dunno if I'm missing something.)

As I understand it, the packages we currently have in pkgsrc are
supposed to match what upstream defines as these package sets.  For
the packages that define the desktop itself, see
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/desktop/2.26/2.26.2/sources/ (or any
more recent version).

I agree that the dependencies of meta-pkgs/gnome are huge (insane,
actually), but that's what The Gnome Project says they should be.  I
think that the idea of keeping our package in sync with upstream is
good.  (Even though if we want to be in sync with upstream, I don't
know why the meta package is not called gnome-desktop, instead of
gnome.)

However, I also realize that matching upstream is very much not
practical, specially in the pkgsrc world where our users have to build
their own packages.  (Point of fact: I have a cron job that rebuilds
the packages I'm interested in overnight, daily, against a up-to-date
copy of pkgsrc.  The machine is pretty powerful, but it takes the
whole night and more (about 10 hours) to just build modular-xorg +
gnome.)

So here comes an idea: what about renaming meta-pkgs/gnome to
meta-pkgs/gnome-desktop to match upstream, and then we create another
package (be it gnome-lite, gnome-pkgsrc, gnome-suggested,
gnome-supported, gnome, or whatever) that provides what *we*, pkgsrc,
think is a more reasonable set for our users?  This package would not
include stuff that is known to be broken in NetBSD, for example.  Note
that most Linux distributions end up deciding what to put in their
gnome package; in most cases, they don't match upstream.  (Again, I
*like* matching upstream, but I don't like that this is the "default"
set of dependencies that users get to install.)

-- 
Julio Merino