Re: devel/git and devel/git-base are confusing

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

Kamil Rytarowski <n54%gmx.com@localhost> writes:

> A user that wants to install git (and nothing else) shall just type
> 'pkgin install git'.

But from my viewpoint, gitk is part of git.  So the git package only
contains things that are part of git, built from the upstream git
release tarball.

> Right now git installs gitk and git documentation. If a git user (like
> me) would want to install them, he or she would search how gitk is named
> searching for it, like git-gitk or git-gui.. same for the documentation.

While I see reasonable opinions differing about gitk being included, the
idea that man pages are split off is probably unique to git and with
very little if any precedent.  (I mean "man pages", not "1000 page latex
documentation".)

> The package name shall be obvious at the first sight and argument that
> DESCR is sufficient against user-friendliness. We could postulate to
> remove DESCR as checking PLIST or distfiles is always enough.

That's not fair.  DESCR is explicitly what is supposed to describe the
package - that's the entire point of the file.  And you are defining
"obvious" to mean "what I expect".  It's quite clear from the discussion
that different people have different impressions of obvious; that's the
root of this issue.

We have had a number of people comment.  I think the numbers of wanting
it to change and wanting it to remain are similar.  Almost always, there
are a large number of people content with the situation who don't speak
up.  I lean fairly strongly against churn, so in my view similar numbers
isn't a good enough reason for a rototill.

My impression is that the thing that upsets people is
  install git
  end up with tcl/tk and needing X

and I have heard zero complaints about

   but I got man pages with my command line tools when I used pkgin (or
   some other binary package repository).  I didn't want those.

   I got the git-subtree command installed, and it's taking up 32 kB.

So "git" should include man pages, and might as well include the contrib
package.  Packages are expected by almost everyone to contain man pages
for commands they contain.

So if we just unhooked git-gitk from "git"

   there would be no rototilling (no rename/pivot)

   people who install "git" still get man pages, fulfilling the
   expectation that installed commands have man pages

   people who install "git" will not get tcl/tk and need X

   people who really don't want man pages because they want the command
   line tools bare on some minimal system can continue to install
   git-base, which is appropriate because they are doing something
   slightly off the normal plan.  As Oskar noted, we have a large number
   of foo-base for restricted subsets.  But I don't think many others if
   any omit man pages.

   people who want gitk can trivially add it


I'd like to separate discussion of unhooking gitk from more radical
changes like removing man pages from the installation of "git".  So:


Please speak up if you object to dropping git-gitk as a dependency of
the git metapackage.  I am assuming that everyone worried that "git" is
too much will like this change, and I am hoping that the people who
mostly like the current "git" package won't mind much.