Canonical Finally Discovers "--no-install-recommends" Is Worthwhile For Docker

[Britoid]

Don't know about containers (don't use that at all) but DEB have far better support for various init-systems than RPM, if you have to support sysvinit, upstart and systemd for the same package it's breeze with DEB but not so much on RPM (talking from experience here).

What does a package format have to do with an init system? RPM doesn't give a flying crap what init system is being used. RPMs however can pull their upstream service files, where as DEBs Debian has to go through and make Debian-specific service files cause of "init-freedom", whatever the fuck that means.

[stormcrow]

What does a package format have to do with an init system? RPM doesn't give a flying crap what init system is being used.

Red Hat's RPM team: Challenge accepted. Hold my beer...

[Britoid]

Red Hat's RPM team: Challenge accepted. Hold my beer...

Anyone who makes a package manager reliant on a service manager should be fired.

**Looks at Snap**

[SystemCrasher]

First thing I do on Debian/*buntus/etc is like this:
# cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/30-no-sr
---cut---
APT::Install-Recommends 0;
APT::Install-Suggests 0;
---cut---
That prevents OS from becoming uber-bloated real soon. Maintainers throw all kinds of crap they think someone may want into suggested and/or recommended. This quickly pulls you about half of debian/*buntu repo. It usually too much even for full fledged OS install and just woeful in containers and VMs since these grow huge and could be numerous enough as well.

If one speaks English and sets that as system appearance (=doesn't wants translated programs appearance - translations usually poor/incomplete anyway except maybe few languages):

---cut---
# cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/35-no-lang
Acquire::Languages "none";
---cut---

...that makes apt to fetch less catalogs (==faster "apt update", etc) and puts less cruft on system drive.

p.s. not sure about RPM but apt makes things in relatively smart way: it calls registered "hooks" for various operations. Internally it does not cares if it would be sysv, systemd, upstart or something. It calls hooks and rest is up to hooks to do their job. Look, apt can even flash you kernel in embedded setup, etc. Sure, it doesn't knows how to do this. All it have to do is to call hook that knows it - and it would be done. Actually, I'd say over time it turned into versatile and well thought thing.

[Almindor]

I seriously doubt anyone outside of Cannonical uses Debian or Ubuntu containers for anything. These distros are a mess of compatibility layers for legacy init systems, a crappy network manager, and a bad package manager. These distros might be ok for brain dead desktop users, and that's about it.

Not true simply due to Ubuntu/Debian being the base for many "projects" where using something else will result in an ominous looking C/C++ error that just doesn't make sense to debug and fix (in most cases it's some dependency being built with different build-time options).

I'd actually wager most docker images are based off Debian and Ubuntu.

[Guest]

Not true simply due to Ubuntu/Debian being the base for many "projects" where using something else will result in an ominous looking C/C++ error that just doesn't make sense to debug and fix (in most cases it's some dependency being built with different build-time options).

I'd actually wager most docker images are based off Debian and Ubuntu.

From my experience most are based off alpine, and I've heard devops complain about every piece of software that requires glibc.

[anarki2]

The first thing I do on a freshly installed Debian system is:

echo 'APT::Install-Recommends "false";' > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99-custom

I don't find it extremely difficult to install some of the recommended dependencies after reading package description later by hand.

Which is cool on your own hobby PC, but not when you have to deploy dozens of workstations, where manually installing tons of random missing packages isn't exactly feasible. That extra disk space is usually way cheaper than IT labor.

[starshipeleven]

Oh well, Docker is dead anyway.

Nigga what?

[starshipeleven]

I'm not sure I understand the issue all people talk about "missing packages".

Isn't the "recommended packages" something that is not required to operate the applications you have installed? If it's not so then WHAT THE FUCK?

[starshipeleven]

From my experience most are based off alpine, and I've heard devops complain about every piece of software that requires glibc.

You are talking of decent projects made by half-serious people.

A lot of custom commercial stuff is using Ubuntu because that's the only non-Windows OS the developer knows, and the only OS the application will ever work on as there is no real dependency list on the payload application but it relies on "what libraries are installed by default".

Then again, many I know would like to kill that with fire.