FS#76315 - [mkinitcpio] Move binutils dependency to optdepends

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Jeremy Goss (jemgoss) - Thursday, 27 October 2022, 15:08 GMT
Last edited by Jelle van der Waa (jelly) - Monday, 18 September 2023, 17:44 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Arch Projects
Status Closed
Assigned To Giancarlo Razzolini (grazzolini)
Morten Linderud (Foxboron)
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description:

Any chance the binutils dependency can be moved to optdepends?
binutils is part of the base-devel group - i.e. a development utility - and I don't think it should be dragged in for EVERY linux install.

As far as I can tell, binutils is only required for objcopy, which is used when generating Unified Images and that's not the default: it requires manually editing the mkinitcpio preset to enable that. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Maybe mkinitcpio can display a warning if objcopy is missing before its use.

This is related to https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/72877, which asked that binutils be added as a dependency, but even that suggested as an optdepends.

This may seem unnecessary but will help to reduce the overall dependency creep for a base system.

Additional info:
* package version: mkinitcpio 31-2+
This task depends upon

Closed by  Jelle van der Waa (jelly)
Monday, 18 September 2023, 17:44 GMT
Reason for closing:  Moved
Additional comments about closing:  https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/m kinitcpio/mkinitcpio/issues/212
Comment by Toolybird (Toolybird) - Friday, 28 October 2022, 05:37 GMT
It might be kinda optional now...but if this thing [1] ever gains traction!...

[1] https://0pointer.de/blog/brave-new-trusted-boot-world.html
Comment by nl6720 (nl6720) - Friday, 28 October 2022, 06:47 GMT
If https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/mkinitcpio/mkinitcpio/-/merge_requests/24 gets merged, then binutils will not be optional anymore.

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