On Tue, Sep 28, 2004 at 12:23:31PM -0700, Mark Dierolf wrote:
> This whole conversation has gotten out of hand. Step back and realize
> that a massive portion of gentoo's userbase wants/needs dhcp. It's a
> big thing.
The majority of the userbase may have use for BOOTP/DHCP, but that
doesn't mean they should be stuck with a dhcp client.

The kernel IP autoconfig support is all I use on some of my systems.

> If you really want to *strip* gentoo, get rid of wget. WTF is wget
> doing in by default??
Fine, lets make a virtual for a URL fetcher, and just have portage (that
requires some way of fetching files) depend on that.

> The reason is, wget is needed by portage. For many users, dhcp is needed as 
> well. If I can't connect to the net, I can't emerge dhcpcd to get on the net. 
> Circular dependencies suck.
Install dhcpcd from a livecd (after chrooting), mainly when you install
initially. We already tell users to install a syslogger and cron daemon
(but we don't explictly require them, and it is quite possible to have a
system that doesn't have them), why should a dhcp client be any
different?

> There is a usability/space tradeoff for all of this. IMO, let's remove 
> framebuffers, slocate, modutils, and hdparm from system, and THEN there might 
> be a good enough argument to seriously justify leaving out dhcpcd. For now, 
> this is a pitifully small thing which is waayyy too valuable to have around.
There is already nothing to require you having those on your system.

> Is our goal just to be able to boot, or do we want to be able to boot and do 
> something?
If you want to do things, you should install the packages to do those
things, eg:
syslogging - install a logger
cronjobs - install a cron daemon
dhcp - install a dhcp client
etc.

> At the very least, let's make it a USE flag that is on by default. That way, 
> all of the "hardcore" users can strip out that whopping 62k that dhcpcd and 
> all of it's related documentation take up by putting -dhcp in their 
> make.conf. I think it's ridiculous, but i'm an advocate of flexibility.
I'd say having users just install it if they need it is a much more
flexible solution that needing to put a dhcp use flag into place.
That way they also don't lose their dhcp client when they do USE="-*
..."

> If we have 1000 use flags, 1000 more can't hurt, right?
PHP5's 101 use flags at last count is getting out of hand already.

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
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