Package pruning for FC4 and beyond - DRAFT FINAL

[Eric Warnke]

At this point I think I have weeded out all of the packages that should 
not be moved and solicited enough feedback to give put forward a 
reasonable set of packages to be moved from core to extras.

This is the last posting to this list.  Please forward additional 
comments off-list and I will pass the whole parcel along in a day or two.

I do believe in a slimed down core so that we all can have a stronger 
and more efficient base of software to work from.  To divert energy into 
packages that duplicate effort seems waistful and counter productive. 
To that end I submit to the community the list of packages that I think 
should migrate to extras and be picked up by the community or be dropped.

I am also willing to pick up some of these packages in extras based if 
they are used in my environment and current maintainers want to give 
them up.

*Recomendation for depreciation*

fsh - fast shell, features being absorbed into OpenSSH ( Depreciate in 
anticipation of OpenSSH functionality )


*Ojections, let technical team make final call.*

mc - Is this really a core util? would it be better served in extras? 
several objections as the only text mode file manager.  I'm on the fence 
on this one.

freeglut - libtiff dependancy - 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=149784

dovecot/cryus - IMAP server cyrus does seem more like a specialty 
package when compared to the simplcity and utility of dovecot. OTOH 
cyrus is maintained for RHEL and other packages depends on cyrus-sasl. 
The community definatly appears to favor keeping dovecot and letting 
cyrus be religated to extras.

lynx/w3m+w3m-el/elinks - 1 objection about scripts using lynx... ether 
those scripts are not part of core or they are not marked correctly.  If 
you can surf the web with either, you can download them from extras.  If 
either has a dependancy in core the .src.rpm needs to be corrected. 
Personally I think lynx and w3m should go to extras.

SDL - Few things depend on this. 1 objection. Would be nice to have in 
core, but is really not a core function since nothing in core depends on 
it.  Anything that is going to require it can pull it down from extras.
+ kdeaddons - small add on packages. not 100% necessary.
+ gstreamer-plugins
+ theora-tools
! *gnomemeeting* - It is possible to compile without SDL support, I will 
test that change ans see what aspects of the program it affects.

nut - nice package, but is it really core materal? 1 objection used on 
server.  Is server use enough to keep it in core?

talk - protocol is getting old with IM - 3 objections... do people still 
use this.  Last time I saw this in active use was a decade ago.  Unlike 
other mature tools nothing really depends on talk.  I think this is in 
the same category as telnetd, it's just not in wide enough use to 
justify keeping it in core.


*Recommend eviction from core*

ncftp - duplicate funcationality ( ftp, lftp ) nobody appeard to have 
any love lost if this moves to extras
w3m/w3m-el - another text pager/web browser
tora - packaged without oracle plugin and does not appear to work out of 
the box with MySQL or postgress.
tix - Tcl/Tk extansion ( only id tkinter can go as well )
routed - appears to be superceeded by quagga
qmkbootdisk - graphical boot disk creation utiltiy - stale
ots - was used as part of abiword, but abiword has been religated to 
extras.  This one is a no brainer
nss_db - partly broken. Most usefulness gone now that nscd is standard ( 
I will personally manage since I wrote the fix )
mew - emailing in emacs
dmalloc, valgrind - electricfence appears to be more compatible and 
better developed.
giftrans - netpbm tools can do the same
iptstate - package getting stale
jed - another text mode editor
joe - yet another text editor ( nano / emacs / vi )
nedit - another x text editor
Canna - Superceeded by IIMF - nothing depends ! 10MB
MagicPoint - Duplicated functionality already in other packages OO.o
a2ps - text to postscript tool required by xfprint ( xfprint already in 
extras ) no brainer
awesfx - OLD ( 2000 ) D:0
cdecl - C/C++ to English conversion D:0
apel - extras for emacs
+ ddskk - extra input methods for emacs
+ flim - message encoding emacs
+ wl - imap/pop/nntp reader
arptables_jf - specialized filtering of arp D:0
cscope - c code browser - duplicate effort D:0
cdlabelgen - does anyone use? D:0
autorun - functionality in most desktops already d:0
ftpcopy - utility D:0.  I have never used it do we need in core
g-wrap - Another wrapper for a development utility d:0

Cheers,

-- 

Eric Warnke                   Computer Programmer / Systems Analyst
eric at snowmoon.com                                      518-727-1523
GPG Fingerprint: E7C5 615B 2115 C9D9 7E75  5088 930B 91E5 218B 6259

'There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat,
plausible, and wrong.' - H.L. Mencken

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