Removing base group packages ok?

ataraxia · 2009-10-09 01:13:11

I'm wondering if removing some of the packages in the base group that I don't think I need is safe. Is it officially considered a bad idea? Are there likely to be undeclared dependencies on some of these packages, in the way that base-devel packages are implicitly required for using makepkg? Scripts that run "which" to find a command, "gettext" to localize a string, or "mdadm" to see if a RAID is present, for example?

Allan · 2009-10-09 01:43:25

Packages in the "base" group are generally expected to be installed and may not be listed in dependencies... Saying that, I have removed a number that I know I do not need installed. If you really need a package, you can always reinstall it. Just have a rescue CD handy

sand_man · 2009-10-13 05:43:32

Just don't pacman -Rs glibc

Allan · 2009-10-13 06:01:30

I have done a "pacman -Rd glibc" once. Dan was trying to show me that the old pacman.static was not all that static.... Fun times!

kirothi · 2009-10-13 09:00:58

I removed a few packages from the base group.

Just basic things like, support for FS that i dont use like reiserfs and dhcpcd (dont remove that if you actually need dhcp)

If you check out the package page and list the base repository, you can go trough the descriptions and see if there is stuff there that you dont use. Thats how i did it.

Kiro.

shining · 2009-10-13 09:47:43

Allan wrote:

I have done a "pacman -Rd glibc" once. Dan was trying to show me that the old pacman.static was not all that static.... Fun times!

Yeah Dan mentioned this several times, I never tried though.
So what happened ? Is it because pacman.static is not really static or because of something else ?
Like how can you use a shell to run pacman.static without glibc ?

Aprz · 2009-10-13 11:45:17

shining wrote:

Allan wrote:
I have done a "pacman -Rd glibc" once. Dan was trying to show me that the old pacman.static was not all that static.... Fun times!
Yeah Dan mentioned this several times, I never tried though.
So what happened ? Is it because pacman.static is not really static or because of something else ?
Like how can you use a shell to run pacman.static without glibc ?

I've never actually done this before and because you guys mention this, I decided to look into some GCC options and learn a little bit more about program execution, glibc, and other relevant stuff (or so I think). I quickly bumped into -static on GCC. So far my impression of this is that it if you compile with -static, it will not only compile with the code of the program, but also the library it uses (rather than dynamicly linking to to it when it's executed). So as for pacman.static and a shell, couldn't they be compiled with -static so glibc wouldn't be required when the binary is distributed? I know that the major downfall of this is that the product binary is going to be huge... I even checked this out with doing a little "hello", dynamic is 4.5K and static is 567K, huge difference... Oh well, I just quickly saw that and felt like posting it before I forget. I'll look more into since I am curious.

Allan · 2009-10-13 11:57:39

shining wrote:

Allan wrote:
I have done a "pacman -Rd glibc" once. Dan was trying to show me that the old pacman.static was not all that static.... Fun times!
Yeah Dan mentioned this several times, I never tried though.
So what happened ? Is it because pacman.static is not really static or because of something else ?
Like how can you use a shell to run pacman.static without glibc ?

dash is very static so you can use that. And pacman.static just was not as static as advertised, which is pretty much why it was removed from the pacman package. I was mostly static though...

Arch Linux

#1 2009-10-09 01:13:11

Removing base group packages ok?

#2 2009-10-09 01:43:25

Re: Removing base group packages ok?

#3 2009-10-13 05:43:32

Re: Removing base group packages ok?

#4 2009-10-13 06:01:30

Re: Removing base group packages ok?

#5 2009-10-13 09:00:58

Re: Removing base group packages ok?

#6 2009-10-13 09:47:43

Re: Removing base group packages ok?

#7 2009-10-13 11:45:17

Re: Removing base group packages ok?

#8 2009-10-13 11:57:39

Re: Removing base group packages ok?

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