Unwanted RPM dependencies

[David Timms]

Bernardo Innocenti wrote:
> (Cc'ing all the relevant package maintainers. sorry if
> I got someone else by mistake)
> 
> 
> We could get rid of a few packages on the OLPC in a cleaner
> way if we could loosen dependencies a little.
> 
> Some random things I noticed:
> 
> - cracklib has a hard dependency on pam.  Is there a way
>   we could make it optional?
> 
> - mkinitrd depends on lvm2 and dmraid.  Both could easily
>   be made optional.
> 
> - hal depends on cryptsetup-luks (containing bulky 1.2MB
>   static binary in /sbin)
> 
> - libuser and GConf2-dbus bring in openldap, which brings
>   in cyrus-sasl
> 
> Using pristine Fedora packages in OLPC is an advantage for
> support and upgrades.  Also, reducing the minimum install
> generally benefits other Fedora spins for other small
> systems.

Since I also play with older systems with small disks I was going 
through a minimal install {text mode only} and found that about 15 
packages get installed because of grub dependencies: a tree (bottom is 
what is required by others higher up: {text mode is good for reading}

                         grub
                          |
redhat-artwork <--> fedora-logos
        |                    |
   gtk2-engines              |
        |                    |
        ____gtk2__________   |
       /| \   \           \  |
     /  |  \  cups-libs   hicolor-icon-theme
    /   |    \    |     \----------\
atk   pango   libtiff   {pango}    gnutls          {gtk2}
       |    \       \        \                        |
    libthai  cairo   libjpeg  libXft   libXcursor  libXrandr  libX..
           /   |    \           /           |     /    |
{libXrender} libpng  fontconfig        libXrender    libXext
                                               \     /
                                                libX11
At which point it's getting boring ;) and still involves:
libXinerama libXau libXdmcp libXext libXi libXfixes

I think what the dependency on fedora-logos would be for the boot logo. 
My idea would be to separately package/sub package fedora-logos-boot or 
fedora-boot-logos {which provides logos-boot}. This would just have the 
logo in it, and grub rpm would be modified to require a virtual 
dependency of logos-boot {this would make it simpler for distro 
packagers to use an alternate logos-boot package}. I haven't looked at 
the actual packages yet.

My second size concern comes from glibc-common, specifically the 
/usr/share/locale {283 MB}  ( but also and  /usr/share/i18n/ 10MB)

I notice that there are dependencies listed in comps.xml for what gets 
installed when a language is chosen {eg dictionary and openoffice 
translations}. This could be extended to the gazillion locales supported 
by glibc and fedora. The maybe most commonly installed individual 
locales could be made into separate packages {guessing ! english french 
german spanish portuguese ? ?}, and then continent or similar for the 
rest of the locales {noting that there is often sub-locales for some 
reqions} {eg african latin-american asian european} ? Installing 
European would also get the more specific english/french/german loc's.

This would actually reduce install time quite a bit - of the 600+ 
packages that get installed in a base install, the most time seems to be 
taken by the glibc-common install - and it's installing stuff that 
depending on your locale you are unlikely to ever use the other 99% of them.

I did have a thought on whether there exists a tool that can log/count 
file accesses on disk, and then provide reports on used v not used files 
that were installed by rpm ? Such a thing could help in understanding 
actual usage by applications - and hence what might be better packaging 
splits. Has someone done that before ?

DaveT.