Hi folks! I am currently working on finding and removing all comps entries that point to packages which don't exist any more. There are quite a lot of them. A lot of them are 'optional' entries. While doing this extremely tedious task, it occurred to me to think: what the hell is the *point* of these 'optional' entries any more, anyway? In Ye Olde Days, there was an obvious point to them: they showed up in the installer. Prior to Fedora 18, with the old anaconda UI, the 'package selection' screen gave you per-package selection within the comps groups. You could get it to show you a list of all packages in the group. Ones which were 'mandatory' would be locked in the GUI; you couldn't install the group and *not* install that package. Ones which were 'default' would be selected by default when you selected the group, but you could unselect them if you wanted. And ones which were 'optional' would be unselected by default, but they were *displayed*, and you could select them if you wanted. It looked like this: https://www.tecmint.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/rhel-15.png (you got to see the 'optional' packages if you clicked on...well...'Optional packages'). The old gnome-packagekit, IIRC, also parsed groups and showed you all this stuff. But...we don't do that any more. anaconda does not expose 'optional' packages in any way any more (you can only pick environment groups and their supplementary package groups in anaconda, now). GNOME Software doesn't either. So do we really need these acres of 'optional' packages in comps? I mean, there are 2519 of them in comps-f30.xml.in. That's a lot. I suspect no-one's looked whether most of them make any sense for years. There are entire groups that are *nothing but optional packages*, making them almost entirely useless. So, OK, I think there are probably apps out there that still expose this info. I suspect dnfdragora does, for instance. But is the minor benefit of having these lists of 'hey maybe you'd like this thing' in minor package managers really worth the way they turn comps into even more of a gigantic crufty ball-of-wax than it would otherwise be? Is anyone really super-attached to this kinda stuff? <packagereq type="optional">4ti2</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">alt-ergo</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">alt-ergo-gui</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">atlas</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">automaton</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">automaton-javadoc</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">azove</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">blas</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">bliss</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">bowtie</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">brial</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">bwa</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">cantor</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">cddlib</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">chemtool</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">coq</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">coq-coqide</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">coq-doc</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">coq-emacs</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">cryptominisat</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">csdp</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">csdp-tools</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">cudd</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">cudd-devel</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">cvc4</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">cvc4-devel</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">cvc4-doc</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">dx</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">E</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">eclib</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">EMBOSS</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">fastx_toolkit</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">fflas-ffpack-devel</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">fityk</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">flint</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">flocq</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">frama-c</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">freefem++</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">gabedit</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">galculator</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">gap</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">gappa</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">gappalib-coq</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">gdl</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">genius</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">geomview</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">gfan</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">ginac</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">glimmer</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">GMT</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">gshhg-gmt-nc4-full</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">gshhg-gmt-nc4-high</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">GMT-doc</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">gnome-chemistry-utils</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">gpredict</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">grace</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">grads</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">gromacs</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">gromacs-openmpi</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">gts</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">hdf</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">hdf5</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">hmmer</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">jmol</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">kpolynome</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">kst</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">lagan</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">lapack</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">latte-integrale</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">libmatheval</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">libtcd</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">linbox</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">ltl2ba</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">Macaulay2</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">malaga</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">maxima-gui</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">meataxe</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">minisat2</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">molsketch</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">mona</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">mona-devel</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">mona-emacs</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">mona-examples</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">mona-xemacs</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">mpfi</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">ncl</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">nco</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">ncview</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">netcdf</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">normaliz</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">openbabel</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">opencv</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">paraview</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">picosat</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">picosat-devel</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">plotutils</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">brial</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">polymake</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">pvs-sbcl</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">pypop</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">python3-biopython</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">python3-cvxopt</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">python3-networkx</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">python3-theano</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">qalculate-gtk</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">qalculate-kde</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">qepcad-B</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">qtoctave</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">root</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">routino</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">rrdtool</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">scidavis</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">seaview</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">sextractor</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">SIBsim4</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">stix-math-fonts</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">stp</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">symmetrica</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">sympy</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">tcd-utils</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">TeXmacs</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">tgif</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">tideEditor</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">TOPCOM</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">vaspview</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">veusz</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">vinci</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">wgrib</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">wgrib2</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">why</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">why3</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">wise2</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">wvs-data</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">xdrawchem</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">xgap</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">xtide</packagereq> <packagereq type="optional">zenon</packagereq> can anyone even guess what package group that is? -- Adam Williamson Fedora QA Community Monkey IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net http://www.happyassassin.net _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
