"Jean-David Beyer" <j@d.b> wrote in message news:3FFC6085.4040200@d.b...
> Bob Kircher wrote:
> > Because my Linux app needs to be distributed with the OS, and I want
> > to minimize the overall size of the distribution, I need to determine
> > the smallest set of packages that are required to run my app.
> >
> > Is there a programmatic way to determine this?
> >
> You can find out part of what you need with the ldd command that shows
> you which libraries are used by your program. For example,

Ouch. Painful.

If the package is RPM based, you can say "rpm -q package --requires" to get
a starting list, then go down the list of packages to see what else is
needed. Alternatively, if your installation is kickstart based or your
installation has the "yum" package manager, you can use it to automatically
find all the dependencies and try to supply them after installation of a
minimal OS.