[systemd-devel] [packaging] split of systemd package

[Michael Chapman]

On Wed, 11 Nov 2015, Lukáš Nykrýn wrote:
> Hi,
>
> During systemd.conf we have discussed some recommendation for
> downstreams, how they could split systemd to subpackages, so lets
> continue that discussion here.
>
> Personally I don't think it makes sense to split the package to get a
> smaller core package. Most of our binaries are just few KBs. Only
> exception here is /usr/lib/udev/hwdb.d which, on fedora rawhide, has
> about 5,2 MB (15% of the whole package).
>
> Other aspect would be minimizing external dependencies. I have made a
> list of libraries and which binaries pulls them in [1] and from that
> point of view it would make sense to put follow binaries to subpackage:
> systemd-pull
> systemd-journal-gatewayd
> systemd-journal-remote
> systemd-journal-upload
> systemd-firstboot
> systemd-networkd

Hi Lukáš,

It seems like you're just looking at binaries at the moment, but I think 
some care needs to be taken with config files too.

One gotcha I discovered in having networkd split out, and specifically in 
having 99-default.link in a subpackage, is that it can change the way 
predictable interface naming works, whether or not the networkd daemon is 
managing network interfaces. Udev's net_setup_link builtin consults the 
*.link files directly to determine the interface naming policy.

We have to make sure the mere presence or absence of an otherwise-unused 
subpackage on a system doesn't change the system's behaviour too 
dramatically.

- Michael