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In-Reply-To: <5d5c8583.1c69fb81.9691a.45e5SMTPIN_ADDED_BROKEN@mx.google.com>
From: Alba Pompeo <albapompeo@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2019 22:05:46 -0300
Message-ID: 
 <CAJDAfTDq725MQ_T3LaS015XVwbDtrTZMmLJRjCEd38rUmJGJJA@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: APKBUILD Optional/Recommended Dependencies
To: Rasmus Thomsen <oss@cogitri.dev>
Cc: me@cosmoborsky.com, ~alpine/devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
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I don't think XFCE without icons is " broken ". It's just XFCE without icon=
s.
On the other hand having " recommend packages " to install together
with XFCE seems like " personal preference " to me.
Optional dependencies in my opinion could cause many problems and
solve very few problems.

If there are so many users asking why there are no icons on their XFCE
install that just means the documentation is not effective. Because
information is there
https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/XFCE_Setup#Start_your_desktop

I'd rather work on documentation being more visible then on adding
controversial " optional dependencies " to lots of packages in the
APKBUILD itself.

Just my opinion but I think the less stuff in APKBUILD the better for all.

On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 8:42 PM Rasmus Thomsen <oss@cogitri.dev> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> > Do you know if the logs are available for
> that channel? It may be useful as a future grep source
>
> It's on http://dev.alpinelinux.org . I'd recommend you to join IRC though=
 since that's the main channel of communication.
>
> > To keep with Alpine's goal of being minimal, I feel like a config switc=
h
> is a little much to start with.
>
> I don't think that a config switch is non-minimal in any way (as long we =
don't go overboard with them), but a CLI argument would do for now.
>
> > Not having optional
> dependencies listed has not inhibited usage in Alpine Linux, and at most
> required looking at some documentation or code to find the required
> dependency for a feature.
>
> During the time I've been on #alpine-linux I've lost track of the count o=
f users asking why XFCE looks broken by default (no icons and I think no th=
eme even) because we don't add icons by default for the XFCE meta package (=
since you could install a different icon package) and can't make it recomme=
nded since we don't have that feature.
>
> > To build off my initial idea, it may be nice to have optional
> dependencies listed with apk info , and then perhaps just a flag for
> apk add as a convenience.
>
> The problem with that is that we sometimes (have to?) deliver software (s=
omewhat) broken by default (see XFCE) because we don't have something like =
a "recommended" dependency list. Minimalism is important for Alpine, but I =
feel like recommended dependencies could still fit in this if the maintaine=
rs are careful not to bloat that list.
>
> Regards,
>
> Rasmus