On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 7:20 PM, Alan McKinnon <[email protected]> wrote: > On 15/03/2015 00:34, Rich Freeman wrote: >> On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 6:08 PM, Alan McKinnon <[email protected]> >> wrote: >>> >>> But let's consider this: what level of chaos would arise if @system were >>> dropped? Surely the problem of tracking all deps would get so out of >>> hand so quickly, that @system or something equivalent would immediately >>> be reinstated? >> >> I don't think so. Why don't other distros have this problem with >> their source packages? They actually have more packages to deal with >> since they don't have use flags and often split what is one Gentoo >> package into many packages. > > Other distros DO have the same problem, just framed differently. > > On Debian you need build-essential whether the source package declares > it or not. Now what is build-essential, if not @system cloaked > differently? Yes, @system has much more stuff in it and even some cruft, > but both things fulfil the same function. > > In my experience the general approach from a binary distro is to tell > you to install build-essential or equivalent if you want to compile > stuff. If you forget, there's Google to remind you
In Debian there's the concept of "Required" packages (that are required for the system to run) and "Important" packages (that are available on any Unix system). They're on every Debian system. Those of them that are marked "Essential" cannot be ninstalled. "build-essential" is a metapackage that, mostly, pulls in gcc, make, patch, and linux and libc headers (and other packages tagged as "Build-Essential" in their control files) so you could say that "Required"+"Important"+"Build-Essential" add up to "@system", although from a binary distro's perspective it'd be more accurate to say that "Required"+"Important" add up to "@system". There was an email earlier in this thread about bikeshedding about what should or shouldn't be in "@system". There's the same bikeshedding about "Required"/"Important"/"Essential" in Debian (and "@standard" in Fedora; previously "@core"+"@base"). It's part of the process of maintaining a distro...
