[HEADSUP] Base category

[Ken Brown]

On 12/9/2014 12:48 PM, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> On Dec  9 17:35, Achim Gratz wrote:
>> Corinna Vinschen writes:
>>> I still don't grok why everybody is so hot on keeping the base install
>>> so very small.  Our Base package set is really tiny in comparison
>>> with any Linux distro.  Perl is default on most of them.  Why not
>>> for us?  Disk space is dirt cheap these days.
>>
>> It's more like the additional complexity and growing attack surface of
>> an install with tools you don't regularly use.  This discussion was (and
>> still is) going on for Linux just as well, only that the "more features
>> is better" camp has won.
>
> I'm in the latter camp, too :)
>
>>> The dependency resolution algorithm is in setup, not in upset, and
>>> it doesn't belong there.  setup.ini is regenerated every time a
>>> package is updated.  Who's going to do the manual inspection of the
>>> results every time?
>>
>> Only the leaf packages that are defined to be in Base should be in that
>> group, IMHO.  The set of dependencies is going to change regardless, so
>> trying to chase them is pointless.
>
> I see the point.
>
>>> My concern is the useless "do you really want to install the following
>>> dependencies?" dialog.  It just doesn't make sense for the deps of
>>> the Base category.  Finding a neat solution which avoids this dialog
>>> would be nice to have.
>>
>> As I said, setup.exe could treat dependencies of a Base package as
>> explicitly requested for install, just as it does for Base itself.  For
>> direct dependencies this isn't hard, following dependency chains this
>> way might require one more pass (unless we inject "Base" into the
>> dependencies we encounter).
>
> Right.  I was only pointing out what I was up to.  Setup definitely
> needs another tweak to support that.
>
> Come to think of it.  When exactly do we want to allow installing
> packages without also installing the deps?  How much sense does
> this option really have?

I've had occasion to do this when testing/debugging.  And I can imagine 
experienced users who correctly know that they can safely ignore some 
dependencies.  So I wouldn't want it to be impossible.  But maybe we can 
arrange it so that dependencies are installed by default, without a 
dialog, unless the user has explicitly requested the contrary.

For example, there could be a checkbox on an early screen saying 
something like, "For each selected package, install all of its 
dependencies (RECOMMENDED)".  The box would of course be checked by default.

Ken