I get Arch's whole minimalist thing, I really do. But not even providing man-db in Base? C'mon people. That's just absurd.
@sullybiker holy shit base is so absurd: https://archlinux.org/packages/core/any/base/
i mean, i understand that the entire point of base is purely to provide the necessary utilities to install more packages and you're not supposed to actually be using it to do anything else, but you'd think being at least equivalent in utilities to a heavily gutted busybox compile.
@nytpu In fairness the docs do say you may need other packages, but no manpages? No dhcp client? GIve me a fucking break.
(maybe they do, I don't know Arch)
# pacman -Qi man-db Name : man-db Version : 2.9.4-1 Description : A utility for reading man pages Architecture : x86_64 URL : https://www.nongnu.org/man-db/ Licenses : GPL LGPL Groups : None Provides : man Depends On : bash gdbm zlib groff libpipeline less libseccomp Optional Deps : gzip [installed] Required By : None Optional For : None Conflicts With : man Replaces : man Installed Size : 2.26 MiB Packager : Andreas Radke <andyrtr@archlinux.org> Build Date : Tue 09 Feb 2021 06:36:13 AM UTC Install Date : Tue 23 Feb 2021 05:44:16 AM UTC Install Reason : Explicitly installed Install Script : Yes Validated By : Signature
[0] Apart from running into a glibc bug (is there a kernel interface missing?) and picking an image from last year to run instead. bugs.archlinux.org/task/69563
So it seems the "cli-base" package that makes things pleasant to interact with is the "posix" package.
@clacke @sullybiker pacman is not aware of package groups unless you explicitly look at them (pacman -Si posix), and no “real” packages require it, so it looks empty.
@sullybiker @clacke all install directions tell you to also install base-devel, but the thing is that it doesn't include man-db either! maybe they should also recommend posix just so you at least have a stable posix base even if you do want to stay minimal.