Manifesto Time

OK, I'm bored with the kernel thing right now, and we need something to install before I really get into it. So I'll be moving on to hacking pacman to use a git repository and rewriting package dependencies. But right now it's time to clear my head, step back, and look at the bigger picture-- so on to the promised jet-fu manifesto.

The over-all aim of jet-fu is to be a small server. This means:
> Only dependencies for packages will be the bare minimum to run the package.
- trash80 described it better than I ever could in his first post, but basically just because a package *could* need something to enhance its features, doesn't mean it should automatically be installed. If the server admin wants it, (s)he can grab it themselves. Optional dependencies will be listed in at least one place for reference so they can be installed as well if the admin so desires. I like that pacman already simply lists optional dependencies on install, I wouldn't change that feature, others may disagree though. If mainstream pacman changes this behaviour, we may fork. Another possible place to list dependencies would be a wiki or something.
> Small, customized kernel from the moment of install.
- Rather than having to roll your own kernel to clear up all the cruft and extra drivers a distro kernel installs (and which the kernel trudges through on boot each time to see which ones need to be loaded), the installer will only put in the base kernel and the drivers needed to run the exact hardware/software that's configured at the moment. Additional modules will be available online (on the package server?), and can be downloaded on-the-fly when they need to be loaded, and then become persistent in the system.
> No gui, because servers don't need guis.
- Sounds simple enough. No X or anything like that available, just command-line access or a web interface. Something along the lines of webmin, but better. Since this is already geared towards LAMP servers, all the tools are there and running, just log into the admin interface and do what you need to do.

Obviously, right now we're basing the distro on arch, to some degree. They have the most featureful package manager that still runs on a distro that's close to what we want to achieve. I realize the apt suite and *rpm* are at least as featureful as pacman, but debian has gotten bloated over the years, and rpm-based distros have always tended to be bloated.

Some ideas we're playing around with that may or may not make it to release are: git repo server, ditching HAL (since it seems only certain gui apps like thunar use it now) and writing our own udev. Again, these are subject to change. I may also have forgotten some things, so there may be a manifesto part 2 in the future.

One last thing, all tools we write will be in python. We're going with python 2.6 as our standard version, with our code geared to 3.0, then upgrading to 3.0 when it becomes more mainstream.