Split Gettext Package

Summary

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

Owner

Name: Sundeep ANAND, Jens PETERSEN
Email: suanand@redhat.com, petersen@fedoraproject.org

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

initial devel thread floating the idea (April 2022)

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 (PR)
- 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.

Search

Changes/GettextRuntimeSubpackage

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