Size of bare-bones guixsd

Size of bare-bones guixsd

[Vincent Legoll]

Hello,

I'm wondering if there's interest in reducing the bare-bones system
footprint, there are some X / GUI stuff in there that may / could /
should be trimmed IMHO...

And what would be the way to do this ?

-- 
Vincent Legoll

Re: Size of bare-bones guixsd

[Leo Famulari]

On Fri, Aug 05, 2016 at 11:48:16AM +0200, Vincent Legoll wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm wondering if there's interest in reducing the bare-bones system
> footprint, there are some X / GUI stuff in there that may / could /
> should be trimmed IMHO...

Like what?

> And what would be the way to do this ?

I would take a look at gnu/system.scm which, if I understand correctly,
implements the core of GuixSD.

Variables like %base-packages and %base-firmware might be interesting to
look at.

By the way, people usually ask about *adding* things to the bare-bones
example :)

Re: Size of bare-bones guixsd

[Vincent Legoll]

>> I'm wondering if there's interest in reducing the bare-bones system
>> footprint, there are some X / GUI stuff in there that may / could /
>> should be trimmed IMHO...
>
> Like what?

I know these probably come from indirect dependencies of other tools,
for advanced features... (please remember that I come with a long
background of gentoo negated use flags)

libXpm, cairo, libxcb, randrproto, glibmm, randrproto, mkfontscale,
inputproto, imagemagick, xtrans, gtk+, compositeproto, cups*, inkscape,
xextproto, freetype, libXrender, gdk-pixbuf, libxcb, libXdmcp, libXaw,
xcb-proto, pixman, netpbm, libvorbis, libcddb, openjpeg, atkmm, libxmu,
libx11, etc...

And I may have missed some...

Some come probably as "guix graph" deps...

I was thinking of bare-bone just as what that name implies, just what is
needed for booting, guix dependencies, and nothing more...

As if I was designing an embedded system with no place in the flash
for anything superfluous, maybe that was a bad assumption...

>> And what would be the way to do this ?
>
> I would take a look at gnu/system.scm which, if I understand correctly,
> implements the core of GuixSD.
>
> Variables like %base-packages and %base-firmware might be interesting to
> look at.

I'll first try to remove some from the %base-packages list and see what is
trimmable...

> By the way, people usually ask about *adding* things to the bare-bones
> example :)

Maybe make a real bare-bones, and then based upon this one, a more "usable"
CLI-system, with more stuff added.

-- 
Vincent Legoll

Re: Size of bare-bones guixsd

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi!

Vincent Legoll <vincent.legoll@gmail.com> skribis:

> I'm wondering if there's interest in reducing the bare-bones system
> footprint, there are some X / GUI stuff in there that may / could /
> should be trimmed IMHO...
>
> And what would be the way to do this ?

Sorry for the late reply.  This would be interesting, and the starting
point would be to look at the output of:

  guix size $(guix system build gnu/system/examples/bare-bones.tmpl)

I think the X stuff is pulled by lsh.

Ludo’.

Re: Size of bare-bones guixsd

[David Craven]

> I know these probably come from indirect dependencies of other tools,
> for advanced features... (please remember that I come with a long
> background of gentoo negated use flags)
>
> libXpm, cairo, libxcb, randrproto, glibmm, randrproto, mkfontscale,
> inputproto, imagemagick, xtrans, gtk+, compositeproto, cups*, inkscape,
> xextproto, freetype, libXrender, gdk-pixbuf, libxcb, libXdmcp, libXaw,
> xcb-proto, pixman, netpbm, libvorbis, libcddb, openjpeg, atkmm, libxmu,
> libx11, etc...

Could it be that these are dependencies of wacom which is a dependency
of libinput? In that case you can try replacing libinput with libinput-minimal.

David

Re: Size of bare-bones guixsd

[David Craven]

> As if I was designing an embedded system with no place in the flash
> for anything superfluous, maybe that was a bad assumption...

I soc that doesn't support an sd card won't support linux either ;-)

Generally flash is used for the bootloader and then linux or guixsd is
loaded from an sd card...

Re: Size of bare-bones guixsd

[Vincent Legoll]

On Sat, Aug 6, 2016 at 6:28 PM, David Craven <david@craven.ch> wrote:
> Could it be that these are dependencies of wacom which is a dependency
> of libinput? In that case you can try replacing libinput with libinput-minimal.

Thanks for the hint, I got the following during libinput -> libinput-minimal
transition, not sure it is a real problem, though:

/tmp/guix-build-libinput-minimal-1.4.0.drv-0/libinput-1.4.0/libtool: line 1734:
ldconfig: command not found

-- 
Vincent Legoll