Package Sizes BIG with pacman/archlinux?

Question

New to archlinux, loving it, but I'm starting to feel the binary packages are quite big. I haven't done a comparison, but just have a look at these -
# pacman -S firefox
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...
Targets (4): mozilla-common-1.4-1 mime-types-1.0-3 xulrunner-2.0.1-2
firefox-4.0.1-1
Total Download Size: 0.00 MB
Total Installed Size: 87.83 MB
# pacman -S xmonad xmonad-contrib
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...
Targets (9): ghc-7.0.2-1 haskell-syb-0.3-1.2 haskell-x11-1.5.0.0-7.2
haskell-transformers-0.2.2.0-1.2 haskell-mtl-2.0.1.0-1.1
haskell-utf8-string-0.3.6-7.1 xmonad-0.9.2-1.2
haskell-x11-xft-0.3-19.2 xmonad-contrib-0.9.2-1.2
Total Download Size: 59.24 MB
Total Installed Size: 772.55 MB
# pacman -S denemo
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...
Targets (11): portaudio-19_20071207-3 guile-1.8.8-1 t1lib-5.1.2-2
libgraphite-2.3.1-1 libsigsegv-2.6-1 zziplib-0.13.60-1
texlive-bin-2010.1-8 texlive-core-2010.22154-1
lilypond-2.12.3-7 gtksourceview2-2.10.5-1 denemo-0.9.0-1
Total Download Size: 131.61 MB
Total Installed Size: 352.75 MB
I know, lilypond, latex, haskell are pretty big packages. Still, 87 MB for firefox?!
Do packages across distros take up roughly same amount of space? (for instance, Firefox install size in Ubuntu vs Arch, with similar dependencies)

Answer 1

Ok. Here we go.
Ubuntu 10.10 32 bit wrote:$ sudo aptitude install xmonad
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  ghc6{a} ghc6-doc{a} libbsd-dev{a} libffi-dev{a} libghc6-mtl-dev{a} libghc6-mtl-doc{a}
  libghc6-x11-dev{a} libghc6-x11-doc{a} libghc6-x11-xft-dev{a} libghc6-x11-xft-doc{a}
  libghc6-xmonad-contrib-dev{a} libghc6-xmonad-contrib-doc{a} libghc6-xmonad-dev{a}
  libghc6-xmonad-doc{a} xmonad
0 packages upgraded, 15 newly installed, 0 to remove and 7 not upgraded.
Need to get 72.8MB of archives. After unpacking 354MB will be used.
archlinux x86_64 wrote:
$ sudo pacman -S xmonad
Password:
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...
Targets (7): ghc-7.0.2-1  haskell-syb-0.3-1.2  haskell-x11-1.5.0.0-7.2
             haskell-transformers-0.2.2.0-1.2  haskell-mtl-2.0.1.0-1.1
             haskell-utf8-string-0.3.6-7.1  xmonad-0.9.2-1.2
Total Download Size:    56.66 MB
Total Installed Size:    734.23 MB
That's a huge difference, but, Ubuntu 10.10 installs older version of ghc.
ubuntu 10.10 wrote:$ sudo aptitude install ghc6
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  ghc6 libbsd-dev{a} libffi-dev{a}
0 packages upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 7 not upgraded.
Need to get 62.8MB of archives. After unpacking 280MB will be used.
arch wrote:
$ sudo pacman -S ghc
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...
Targets (1): ghc-7.0.2-1
Total Download Size:    53.17 MB
Total Installed Size:   666.61 MB
So, it seems ghc 7 is considerably bigger than ghc 6. Probably it'll take much more space than 280 MB on a ubuntu machine too.
Next, I checked sizes of some of the applications I've installed in both O/S. Counted just the app's size, not of dependecies, with these commands
arch: $ pacman -Qi package-name
ubuntu: $ aptitude show package-name
Installed Size
arch ubuntu 10.10
x86_64 32bit
inkscape 0.48.1-3 0.48.0-1ubuntu1.2
83172.00 K 60.5 M
ardour 2.8.11-3 2.8.11-1ubuntu1
19020.00 K 15.2M
audacity 1.3.13-1 1.3.12-7
15224.00 K 6,988k
denemo 0.9.0-1 0.8.10-1ubuntu1
21704.00 K 5,001k
lilypond 2.12.13-7 2.12.3-7
11832.00 K 4227 kB
(+lilypond-data 6910 kB?)
texlive-core 2010.22154-1 texlive-binaries (2009-7)- 17 M
251365.00 K texlive-common (2009-10) - 303 kB
mplayer 33690-1 Version: 2:1.0~rc4~try1.dsfg1-1ubuntu1
13080.00 K 5,513k
smplayer 0.6.9-3 0.6.9-1
7248.00 K 3,133k
vim 7.3.177-1 7.2.330-1ubuntu4
2216.00 K 1,696k
vim-runtime 7.3.177-1 7.2.330-1ubuntu4
25168.00 K 25.4M
I see most packages are of similar/comparable sizes. The difference could be due to version differences, or as Xabre pointed out, due to packaging style. lilypond 2.12.13-7 takes up 11 MB in arch. In ubuntu, the package lilypond is about 4 MB, but it depends on lilypond-data, which is another 7 MB (totaling 11 MB), however there's no such dependency in arch.
I guess there should be similar reasons behind mplayer (130 MB vs 5 MB) and latex/texlive - (250 MB vs 17 MB).
Last edited by ananthp (2011-06-23 19:15:52)