On Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 03:27:35AM +0200, Marc Lehmann wrote: > Package: perl-base > Version: 5.32.1-4+deb11u2 > Severity: minor > X-Debbugs-Cc: report...@plan9.de > > Dear Maintainer, > > I recently installed a fresh bullseye and ran jdupes to deduplicate files. > > To my surprise, this reduced the installed size (on a zstd-compressed btrfs > filesystem) > from 2GB to 1.3GB. > > This was rather unexpected and I investigated. > > One of the larger reasons for this size reduction is a large number of > relatively large files > that are identical in perl-modules-5.32 and perl-base, random example: > > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1466 Sep 24 2021 > /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl-base/unicore/lib/Lb/CL.pl > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1466 Sep 24 2021 > /usr/share/perl/5.32.1/unicore/lib/Lb/CL.pl > > I wonder if thid duplication is intended, and if yes, maybe hardlinks should > be used to save space.
It's intentional and has been the case since the stretch release. The libperl5.xx + perl-modules-5.xx set of packages can be coinstalled between different major versions and architectures, so they need to pull in the full standard library. OTOH a limited part of the standard library needs to be available for perl-base at all times. The duplication could be solved with a small extra package like perl-base-modules-5.xx that both could depend on, but the savings would be just 5.5MB as of bullseye/amd64. And having the separate copies inside perl-base (which is Essential:yes) makes it more robust during upgrades. I can't think of a way to use hard links here. -- Niko Tyni nt...@debian.org
