[OpenWrt-Devel] [PATCH] libnl: split into smaller libraries

[Alexandru Ardelean]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2015 at 5:13 PM, Alexandru Ardelean <ardeleanalex at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Sep 17, 2015 at 4:50 PM, Felix Fietkau <nbd at openwrt.org> wrote:
>
>> On 2015-09-17 15:05, Alexandru Ardelean wrote:
>> > From: Alexandru Ardelean <aa at ocedo.com>
>> >
>> > The idea is that we may only need the libnl core,
>> > or libnl-route or libnl-nf libs, but maybe not all of them.
>> >
>> > This way we can select which ones we need without bloating the
>> > firmware image too much.
>> >
>> > Signed-off-by: Alexandru Ardelean <ardeleanalex at gmail.com>
>> Maybe it would be better to have libnl as a metapackage selecting
>> libnl-core + the other ones. The way you split the package, you might be
>> breaking some packages that depend on it.
>>
>> Or did you review all of the packages to ensure that they only need the
>> core?
>>
>> - Felix
>>
>
> Good point.
> I only took a look at base packages.
>
> Looking through the packages feed, there's keepalived , ibrcommon, kismet,
> bmon and aircrack-ng that depend on libnl.
> Other feeds don't have libnl deps.
>
> I'll check if libnl is sufficient and if not, implement your suggestion.
>
> Thanks
>
>
Seems I'll have to re-spin this patch.
There are a few things that need updating on it. They came up once I did a
full clean + rebuild.
I forgot about the staging dir stuff that piles up and causes
false-successes.

So,
- bmon requires libnl-route
- aircrack-ng requires libnl-genl
- kismet i am not sure 100% ; maybe libnl-genl ; I did not want to
investigate much deeper
- ibrcommon requires libnl-genl and libnl-route
- keepalived requires libnl-genl

Hopefully I got most of this right.

Now, here's the bloat for libnl:
- 86856 Sep 22 14:00 libnl-3.so.200.16.1
- 244304 Sep 22 14:00 libnl-route-3.so.200.16.1
- 16096 Sep 22 14:00 libnl-genl-3.so.200.16.1
- Seems libnl-nf is not needed. That's around 80k.
- libnl-tiny is 30k

Maybe aircrack-ng and keepalived could also work with [just] libnl-tiny,
but that's another discussion.

I need libnl-route for an upcoming new lldpd version, which will require
libnl-route.

The main reason I started this split, is because I need libnl-route, and I
am trying to minimise the bloat wherever I can.
I'll also see about pulling libnl-tiny out [in my case], since I'll be
stuck with needing libnl anyway.

Anyway, moving forward with the split:
1) Do I rename the libnl package to libnl-core and make libnl a metapackage
that pulls in everything ? or
2) Do I leave this structure as is (with the fixes/updates I'll add later)
and update those packages to pull only the libfiles that are needed ?
For 2), I'd of-course need the approval/blessing of the package maintainers
above.