perl_base not in Base ?

[Jon Turney]

On 29/12/2021 14:25, Ken Brown wrote:
> On 12/29/2021 3:51 AM, Achim Gratz wrote:
>> Am 28.12.2021 um 11:57 schrieb Marco Atzeri:
>>> I had the impression it was in the Base category
>>>
>>> @ perl_base
>>> sdesc: "Perl programming language interpreter"
>>> ldesc: "Perl programming language interpreter
>>
>> That split was indeed made to enable making it available for Base 
>> packages, but that decision was never made I think.
> 
> It makes sense to me to add it to Base.  Were there any objections when 
> that was proposed before?
> 
>>> Or is it supposed to be pulled by another Base program ?

I think this was the case, at one time.

I believe something (chkdupexe?) in the 'util-linux' package (which is 
in base) used to be written in perl, and so brought in perl_base.

I think it's since been rewritten in C. So nothing in the base category 
requires perl_base currently (and hopefully in the future :)).

>> Base packages should not pull in non-Base packages, but it appears 
>> that info currently fails that requirement.
> 
> A lot of packages fail that requirement.  I don't think it should be a 
> requirement.  To me, Base packages are those that we've decided should 
> be in every Cygwin installation.  If that forces other packages to be 
> installed, so be it.

Yeah.  It shouldn't be the case that libX is in base just because it's 
required by P, so we have to notice, remember and check if it can be 
removed when P changes to require libY instead...