Package: usrmerge Version: 23 Severity: important Dear Maintainer,
In minimal chroot/container scenarios usrmerge has a huge amount of dependencies, doubling the total size of the container. # apt install usrmerge --no-install-recommends Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done The following additional packages will be installed: libfile-find-rule-perl libnumber-compare-perl libperl5.32 libtext-glob-perl perl perl-modules-5.32 Suggested packages: perl-doc libterm-readline-gnu-perl | libterm-readline-perl-perl make libtap-harness-archive-perl Recommended packages: netbase The following NEW packages will be installed: libfile-find-rule-perl libnumber-compare-perl libperl5.32 libtext-glob-perl perl perl-modules-5.32 usrmerge 0 upgraded, 7 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 7085 kB of archives. After this operation, 47.3 MB of additional disk space will be used. That is not acceptable for the tiny containers. Is it possible to rewrite the code to only use perl-base? without the full perl? Or maybe even pure dash or C? Can we vendor the needed perl bits, and then remove them from disk if the conversion was successful? Can we add a usrmerge-completed package, which is empty, but ensures in preinst that the system is usrmerged? That way in minimal containers said package will be preinstalled by default satifying/providing usrmerge. At the moment, I'm trying to make usrmerge required such that systems that upgrade get it installed, but it is becomming problematic on the minimal containers. Especially, since after installation its no longer needed. Regards, Dimitri.
