xbloat: Script to find packages with a lot of dependencies

[Anachron]

test "${1:-EMPTY}" != "-f" || { args="--fulldeptree"; shift; }
test "${1:-EMPTY}" != "-r" || { args="${args} -R"; shift; }

for pkg in ${@:-$(xbps-query -m | xargs -L1 xbps-uhelper getpkgname)}; do
  printf '%s:%s\n' "${pkg}" $(xbps-query ${args} -x "${pkg}" | wc -l)
done | sort -t':' -k2h | column -s: -t

Example:

picom                   13
mesa-vulkan-radeon      14
cups-filters            16
flatpak                 18
handbrake-cli           18
samba                   21
xorg-fonts              24
firefox                 37
mpv                     44
xorg-apps               44
qemu                    45
base-system             51

[paper42]

I don't think a number of dependencies is a useful metric for how "bloated" a package is, but ignoring that, you should probably use recursive dependencies (xbps-query --fulldeptree -x $pkg).

[leahneukirchen]

Yes, I don't think this tool is generally useful...

[Anachron]

Good suggestions!

I've added to flags:

• -r: Look into repositories, not local
• -f: Use the full dependency tree

I agree that generally speaking, a package with 5 small dependencies could be less bloated than one with 3. However, this is thought to be a companion to xhog, so that one can easier decide which packages take a lot of cruft with them.