New comment by ahesford on void-packages repository https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/pull/39814#issuecomment-1273403437 Comment: I don't understand why adding more dependencies to the build of `base-minimal` is a concern. We don't use it for bootstrapping; that's what `base-chroot` is for, and that's still a separate template. Maybe it adds a little more time to the build, but: 1. As far as CI and official builds are concerned, we ought to keep these dependencies in sync anyway, so any update to `base-minimal` ought to include corresponding updates to `-voidstrap` and `-system`; in that case, the build time is actually *reduced* by avoiding triple package installations. 2. Are people really building custom `base-minimal` on their own enough that we should be concerned that sombody winds up fetching the Linux kernel when building the package from the merged template? Meh. Regarding the dependency chain: I recognize the potential for confusion or annoyance when trying to understand the full list of dependencies of the more featureful bases, but I'm not sure whether that's offset by the fact that chained dependencies makes it more obvious how the packages are related. We've seen a few questions asking for clarity about the differences, and `run_depends: base-minimal [...]` is pretty obvious in that regard. Either way, I can switch to the alternative approach (common variables in a common template to satisfy DRY while avoiding nested dependencies) if there is strong support there.