id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	priority	milestone	component	version	resolution	keywords	cc
32	Rationale for including each package in the book (from LFS Trac)	chris@…	chris@…	"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. Here's a few descriptions to start with...

Coreutils - A number of essential programs for viewing and manipulating files and directories - not only useful to the user, but also needed by the vast majority of configure scripts for source-compiled packages.

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)

Ncurses - A library used by many other packages that manipulate text on the screen, and often use some kind of cursor or menu system. This includes: vim, bash, procps, psmisc, inetutils, texinfo, less, and other packages.

Texinfo - Provides the ability to view ""info"" pages, which provide information about programs and are generally more comprehensive than man pages. Also, the texinfo package itself (specifically the makeinfo and install-info programs) is needed to build and install info pages, which is why texinfo is installed in Chapter 5 of LFS.

Here's a few packages that I really don't use (directly at least - the only way I do use them if other programs run them) myself, and about all I know about them is that they're needed by other packages...

M4 Bison Flex Groff Mktemp (used mostly in various scripts)"	task	closed	minor	CLFS Standard 1.2.0	BOOK	CLFS Standard GIT	fixed