[csw-maintainers] Handling of devel package splits

[Dagobert Michelsen]

Hi Phil,

Am 07.10.2009 um 23:58 schrieb Philip Brown:
> On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Sebastian Kayser  
> <skayser at opencsw.org> wrote:
>> ....
>> That's why i was asking:
>> Would going back to don't have devel splits *at all* also be an  
>> option?
>
> That would result in certain packages quadrupling in size, I think.
> Mostly this is to do with the libfoo.a splitout.
>
> download size IS an issue for some set of our users. That is after
> all, why we split out _rt packages.
>
> I will say this, as something to ruminate on:
> Having 100% consistency, purely for consistency's sake alone, is not a
> good thing, in my opinion.
> It is not the greatest benefit to the greatest amount of users.

So, what does the user want? The users eithers wants headers or not.
It would be fairly easy to add a flag "wants_devel = 1" to pkg-get.conf
or pkgutil.conf which additionally tries to install <pkg>_devel when
<pkg> is requested. There could also be a command to add <pkg>_devel
for every package installed. So, for the usability is doesn't matter
if _devel is split of or not. It may even be better to split it off
and automate it this way.

PS: Same goes for _doc.


Best regards

   -- Dago