shrinking the desktop DVD image to 1.5GB

[Stéphane Graber]

On Thu, 2011-06-09 at 07:23 +0200, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Phillip Susi [2011-06-08 21:52 -0400]:
> > One thing that would be nice to fix with the existing DVD image is the
> > waste of space it has from duplicating the language packs both as
> > packages in the pool, and being installed in the sqashfs live image,
> > which is MUCH larger than the one on the livecd.
> 
> I agree, duplicating them is a hideous waste.
> 
> > It seems like the language packs should only be included in the
> > pool, not the squashfs image, and installed on demand.
> 
> I disagree. They should only be in the squashfs image, so that you can
> actually _use_ the live system in your local language. 
> 
> > This also adds to the installation time significantly ( like 400%
> > increase - it is ridiculous ) since it has to remove all of the
> > language packs from the target system after copying the squashfs.
> 
> That's right, but I'd rather fix that. ubiquity could skip
> /usr/share/locale-langpack/[everything but the selected locale]/
> during copy, then it should be a lot faster?
> 
> Martin

Hi Martin,

Edubuntu has been having that langpack removal problem for a long time
now (since we moved to DVD) and the current logic in ubiquity is already
not to copy the files.

What currently takes a really long time (around 30 minutes on a 45
minutes install for me) is the purging of the langpacks and their
dependencies, mostly:
 - langpack themselves (edubuntu ships with: base, gnome and kde)
 - language-support
 - fonts (quite a few are being pulled by language-support-*)
 - dictionaries/... else that's being pulled by language-support

I'd have to look at a recent log to confirm, but my feeling last time
was that with better dpkg triggers we should be saving a lot of time (as
most of these packages are using triggers).

Hacking the dpkg database post-install and running/merging all the
postrm scripts would probably fix the install time issue but quite
likely introduce a lot of pretty nasty bugs (what if we forget something
or add something to a postrm script without updating our magic ?).

-- 
Stéphane Graber
Ubuntu developer
http://www.ubuntu.com
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