id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	priority	milestone	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc
1673	Why is each package in the book?	chris@…	lfs-book@…	"There should be a page in the book describing exactly what each package does and
why it's in the book. Each package does have a short description of its
functionality, but it doesn't say what exactly you would use that program for or
what other packages might depend on it. Some are pretty simple...

Coreutils - ""a number of programs that are essentiutilities for showing and
setting the basic system characteristics."" Could also add that these programs
are not only useful for the user, but are also used by a vast number of other
programs.

Zlib - libraries for compression and decompression, used by a large number of
programs (including a couple of LFS packages)

Vim - the creators of the LFS book believe that a text editor is absolutely
essential to a basic, usable system, and vim just happened to be the one that
they decided to use (maybe also have a link to the ""Why is vim in the book?""
thread that's linked in the FAQ, or summarize the contents of the thread here)

Some of the packages seem less obvious, Readline being the most common example
(""why is readline in the book?"" seems to be a pretty frequent question on the
mailing lists), but I've noticed procps and psmisc are also frequently mentioned
as ""optional"" packages. Another one is file - I do know that it can be useful,
often for troubleshooting purposes, but (IMHO) it certainly doesn't sound that
way from the description in the book (""why would I need a program to tell me
that most of my files are text files??"").

Basically, I just think that the descriptions in the book, while being accurate
technical descriptions of what each program does, they don't, in many cases, say
anything about *why* you would need that functionality.

Any thoughts on this?"	defect	new	lowest	6.2	Book	SVN	normal