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Release Notes are not required for initial draft of the Change Proposal but has to be completed by the Change Freeze.
Release Notes are not required for initial draft of the Change Proposal but has to be completed by the Change Freeze.
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A '''gettext-tools''' package has been added to gettext, to separate out the larger gettext tools which are not commonly used at runtime.
A gettext-tools package has been added to gettext to separate out the larger gettext translation utilities that are not commonly used at runtime.

Revision as of 06:12, 26 May 2022


Split Gettext Package

Summary

Moving the larger translation tools from the gettext base package into a separate tools sub-package.

Owner


Current status

  • Targeted release: Fedora Linux 37
  • Last updated: 2022-05-26
  • FESCo issue:
  • Tracker bug:
  • Release notes tracker:

Detailed Description

Gettext is one of the core packages. It's installed on-disk size is about ~6.1 MB. A large number of packages directly or indirectly depend on it. Extracting "tools" from main gettext package into a separate sub-package would reduce the footprint by about ~4.7 MB on most normal installations.

After the split this should look like:

gettext package
--------------------
compressed size: 172 kB
uncompressed size: 749.6 kB

gettext-tools subpackage
------------------------
compressed size: 1.0 MB
uncompressed size: 4.7 MB

As gettext depends on gettext-libs:

gettext-libs subpackage
-----------------------
compressed size: 322K
uncompressed size: 933.7 kB

Grouping of binaries:

gettext:
envsubst gettext gettext.sh ngettext

gettext-tools:
msgattrib msgcat msgcmp msgcomm msgconv msgen msgexec msgfilter msgfmt msggrep msginit msgmerge msgunfmt msguniq recode-sr-latin xgettext

Feedback

Benefit to Fedora

Space saving of about ~4.7 MB on most of the normal installations.

Scope

  • Proposal owners:
    • Update the gettext package to have the new gettext-tools package, which pulls in the gettext base package.
    • Updating all Fedora packages with BuildRequires: gettext to gettext-tools (this affects about 1100+ Fedora packages)
  • Other developers:
    • Packagers who own packages that currently depend on gettext at runtime and actually need gettext-tools have to change their Requires: gettext to the new gettext-tools subpackage. (This can safely be done even if they actually only require gettext.)
  • Release engineering:
    • All the spec changes to packages, particularly for BuildRequires, need to land in git before the mass rebuild.
  • Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Alignment with Objectives:

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Both "gettext" and "gettext-tools" obsoletes earlier version of gettext.
So, on update both packages will get installed on systems having gettext. (preinstalled)

For current older Fedora releases gettext should Provides: gettext-tools for forward compatibility.


How To Test

  • test upgrades from F36 to F37
  • test minimal/default installs continue to work as expected
  • packages that depend on gettext continue to rebuild normally


User Experience

User will see lighter gettext package and a new gettext-tools package.
Many of the desktop/web apps/libraries use gettext-tools. They would need to update their dependency to "gettext-tools" now. This subpackaging is also the recommended packaging by upstream and corresponds to Debian's gettext-base and gettext packages.

Dependencies

Packages which explicitly have a dependency on gettext need to check if they need programs provided by gettext-tool, and if so they need to update their dependency to "gettext-tools" from gettext.

Perhaps about ~26 packages require gettext and ~1115 packages have build dependency.
Furthermore, gettext-tools has a dependency to gettext.

Contingency Plan

  • Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) Change owners will revert the relevant packages updated.
    • (Provides: gettext-tools could also be added to gettext if necessary to simplify the reversion)
  • Contingency deadline: Beta freeze
  • Blocks release? No

Documentation

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=blob;f=PACKAGING


Release Notes

A gettext-tools package has been added to gettext to separate out the larger gettext translation utilities that are not commonly used at runtime.