Re: Packages grow, no longer fit on a 💾

[Simon Tournier]

Hi Ludo,

On jeu., 19 janv. 2023 at 15:14, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:

> To me, Emacs is still Emacs, with or without libgccjit.  Of course JIT
> is an improvement, I don’t deny that, but what I mean is that I still
> use Emacs for the very same activities.  This is even more true for
> polkit, because I don’t interact directly with it.

Yeah, there is a trade-off for the maintenance between packages that the
most of us want and specialized packages for user’s own needs.

This reminds me past discussions about parameterized packages. ;-)

Well, for instance the scientific package ’gmsh’ is built full featured
– with GUI using ’fltk’.  That’s a feature that requires big
dependencies; when I mainly use it without GUI.

Another example, git-annex is built full featured – able to run the
WebApp for instance.  That’s a feature that requires a increase of 5%;
when I mainly use a very restricted set of Git-Annex features.

Another instance, the closure of Guix increases a lot from 1.2 to 1.4.
Of course the new version provides many improvements, I do not deny
that, but I still use Guix for the very same activities as I am doing
since version 1.2. ;-)

The tacit policy with Guix packages is that the packages are usually by
default “feature maximalist” or specifically named « <foo>-minimal » …

> Right, and reportedly, Alpine-based images for things like Python are
> smaller than what we do.  There’s no cheating here: images are
> self-contained.

…contrary to Alpine where the packages are usually by default “feature
minimalist” or specifically named « <foo>-<with-feature> ».

Consider the package Emacs [1] and give a look at the recipe for the
package named ’emacs’ [2].  Well, this Alpine package ’emacs’ looks like
the Guix package named ’emacs-minimal’, and then Alpine provides these
variants (subpackages):

    emacs-doc
    emacs-gtk3
    emacs-gtk3-nativecomp
    emacs-nox
    emacs-x11
    emacs-x11-nativecomp

1: <https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/package/edge/community/x86/emacs>
2: <https://git.alpinelinux.org/aports/tree/community/emacs/APKBUILD>

> Maybe a good topic for a sub-group at the Guix Days?  :-)

Yeah for sure. :-) Although, from my point of view, the main issue is
about a policy for package inclusion; I mean there is no secret: light
images means images with less features. :-)

My personal and biased opinion is that Guix should follow minimalist
packages as default packages and provides more variants.  But the
maintenance cost is not free, IMHO. :-)

Cheers,
simon