Why so much extra stuff in "base" and "xcode" images that isn't documented?

[kohenkatz]

Thank you for this very useful project!

We have Internet connection speed and disk usage issues with some of our machines, so we want to build an image that contains only what we need.

We were starting from base images based on the description that these have "only brew pre-installed and the latest version of macOS available", but looking at the Packer files, we see that this isn't actually true. In addition to brew, it looks like they also have:

• HTTP tools - wget ca-certificates curl
• File tools - unzip zip
• Build tools - cmake gcc
• Git plugins - git-lfs git-credential-manager
• File manipulation tools - jq yq
• CI tools - gh gitlab-runner
• Emulation - Rosetta
• Software management tools - rbenv asdf mise
• Languages - multiple versions of Ruby; NodeJs 20.x
• Cloud - awscli

While these tools are certainly useful for many users, do they all really belong in the base image?

If they do belong, should the documentation be updated to say something more like "brew and a handful of common tools pre-installed", etc.?

Additionally, the xcode images say they have "Xcode N with Flutter pre-installed", but they also have undocumented:

• JDK and Android tools
• A bunch of other iOS tools - ideviceinstaller ios-deploy carthage xcbeautify swiftformat swiftlint swiftgen licenseplist tuist fastlane cocoapods xcpretty applesimutils

[edigaryev]

We were starting from base images based on the description that these have "only brew pre-installed and the latest version of macOS available", but looking at the Packer files, we see that this isn't actually true. In addition to brew, it looks like they also have:

Thanks for the heads-up! The description is indeed somewhat outdated, I've created #289 to address this.

We have Internet connection speed and disk usage issues with some of our machines, so we want to build an image that contains only what we need.

You can use vanilla images for this purpose or build your own.