While we're at documentations. The other day I had to copy /usr to some
place else. While doing so, I noted how very large /usr/share/doc is. Yes,
this is definitely a good thing, and yes I understand guran's problems, but
I'm not gonna comment on them here.
Okay, after I realised that it is indeed very huge, I got an idea. What
about making all the documentation (or at least most of it) optional, in
that each package provides the documentation in a -doc subpackage? I mean,
I'm not a developper, but I like to be able to compile a program every now
and then.
In order to do so, I need to have -devel packages installed. For example, I
have gnome-libs-devel installed. This takes ~8 megs. Those 8 megs are a
clear waste for me, as I'll very probably never have a look at it. Yes, I
could simply rm it, but that's not the point of having a package manager
like RPM available.
Now, if the, for me unneeded docs could be put in a seperate package, like
gnome-libs-devel-docs, I could very easily rpm -e it, and still have a
intact rpm database.
The same argument holds very true also for non-devel packages. As I do some
database development, I need to have MySQL installed. Okay, during
configuration I might run into some trouble and might have been glad about
the MySQL-docs. But now that everything is working without any glitches, I
simply do not need the MySQL documentation and would this save about 6 megs
of diskspace.
So, just omitting those two documenations, that I'll never need/read, would
save me some 14 MB of disk space.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not at all saying that those documentations are
bad - frankly, I haven't had a look at them, so I cannot judge. I'm also
not saying that they should not be included at all. They really should be
installed in every installation scheme, maybe besides "expert".
What I'm suggesting is, that documentations are to be split up into seperate
packages. This would allow to slim down hard disk foot print of Mandrake
considerably without having to cut functionality.
Please consider my suggestion and share your thoughts about this, as I'm
interested about it!
Alexander Skwar
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