> From: Jesse Keating <jkeating@redhat.com>
> On 10/09/2012 05:55 AM, John.Florian@dart.biz wrote:
> >> From: "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" <johannbg@gmail.com>
> >
> >> I personally want to see the documentation releng/fesco has about what
> >> the default minimal set, what the process is to have something
> >> include,excluded from it and why the packages that exist in it are there
> >
> >> in the first place.
> >
> > I too would very much like to see this as almost all of the (hundreds,
> > soon to be thousands of) systems I manage start life as a minimal install
> > and grow "just enough" to fit their role.  I take "minimal" quite
> > literally in that I believe it should be the absolute minimum to boot,
> > login and install more atop of that, but only as needed.  Anything beyond
> > this is some "use case", but minimal is minimal.
> >
> > --
> > John Florian
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> And now we see why Anaconda did /not/ have a "minimal" option for a
> while.  Minimal means different things.
>
> To some, it means an OS that boots, lets root log in, read man pages,
> use non-english languages, and add more packages with depsolving.  To
> others it means an OS that boots and lets root login, and that's it.
> Others feel that minimal should be enough to give you a filesystem and
> runtime you can chroot into (but no kernel/bootloader).


I stumbled onto the multiple meanings while writing that message.  I had started to say that minimal should consist of no more than grub, kernel, bash, login, yum and their deps, then thought to myself, well of course I want init (systemd) and ... and ...

So maybe I should say that I think Fedora has always had it just about right, IMHO.  A very small, but functional system ready to grow and can do so with its own tools.


> Right now, "minimal" is defined in comps, as a set of packages.
> Installing this group will depsolve and add more of course, which is
> controlled by the packages itself.  Anaconda will add a few more things
> forcefully, such as a kernel and a bootloader and potential arch
> specific utilities, as well as authconfig and
> system-config-firewall-base in order to add the root user and configure
> the firewall.


Makes sense, but can someone please tell me what "comps" stands for?  I mostly know what they're used for, but have never guessed the acronym.  My best guess just came to me after years of pondering: compilations?  Anyway, I feel rather stupid asking this Q, but hey "there's no stupid Qs, right?"  ;-)

--
John Florian