On Fri, Aug 06, 2010 at 10:57:21AM +0100, Dave Martin wrote:
We could remove these files, but I agree it may be a false optimisation: the size of the release filesystem is no longer representative of the steady-state size of the filesystem when it's in use in this case.
Well, I think that assumes that what you are doing with the image is installing more software through apt, which I agree is an important use case. However, there may be other scenarios where it's not as important.
I guess I do see a motivation for making the initial image download smaller, even if it does imply most users will need to apt-get update anyway, because:
- It improves the first impression users get downloading the package
- It is likely the user will have to apt-get update afterwards anyway, since the archive changes continuously
- The image size is a proxy for "installed system size", and I don't want us to be seen as a fat distribution. If the headless linaro image were 50MB I am sure we'd have many users impressed already at how convenient and flexible a platform we would be providing.
Thanks for the commentary,