Re: [gentoo-user] Removing unnecessary software.

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 11:29 AM, Ста Деюс <sthu.deus@×××××××××××.org> wrote:
>
> The problem i see is that admin. is not free to change the packages
> set, that is dictated by a profile. -- Like i have pointed out, once i
> tried to remove SSH (for the example, so that here can be another
> package, and it was the first (base?) profile), on next system update,
> it returned and got compiled installed.

You can add them to package.provided to keep them from coming back.

This problem with the @system set has been discussed a few times.
Right now it is a combination of:

1.  A minimal set of bootstrap packages needed to build the rest of the distro.
2.  Some useful tools that is hard to live without.

Openssh falls into #2, as does an editor (typically nano by default).
The reality is that you can can run a system without either, and you
can install either from the rest of @system if it isn't already there.

A lot of it has to do with how our stage3s are created.  I think it
would make sense to shrink @system but also have some meta-package or
set which comes pre-installed, but which can be more easily removed
without all the screaming you get from removing packages that are in
@system.  Shrinking @system would also reduce the number of packages
that cannot be built in parallel using portage.

I don't think there would be much opposition to it.  However, it would
take a fair bit of work.

> Another question is how do i change dependencies of one package
> that i suppose will live happily w/o whole the set of the packages it
> supposes it needs. -- Like, i want to play only media files, but not
> to convert them, so, the ffmpeg package, for example, that i do not need
> at all, gets compiled and installed -- i would trim from dependencies
> lists of the other packages.

For something like ffmpeg you'll really need to know what you're
doing, as it is a bit of a beast.  If it supplies an enable/disable
configure switch then I'd add a USE flag to it and tie it to both the
dependency and then use use_enable to toggle the setting.  Depending
on what you're doing there is a good chance Gentoo would accept the
patch to add it to the package.

For a personal ebuild you could just hard-code it as well - just
remove the dep from the (*)DEPENDS string and add any necessary flags
to not require it.

ffmpeg already as the "encode" USE flag, however, which might just do
what you want already.  It has a laundry list of USE flags so you
might want to check those before re-inventing the wheel.


-- 
Rich