Please see my other thread about including repodata in the AIX Toolbox distribution media.
While I would generally prefer fewer dependencies, I'd also rather not reduce the utility for others. We should be able to download the Toolbox ISO and have everything we need to install from that. While it won't reduce the number of installed RPMs, it will remove the need for Internet access on the target and manual dependency calculation.
Once we have this, setting up a quickie repo is a loopmount, a python -m http.server, and a trivial sed - or just a local loop mount and the sed.[1]
So my "vote" would be to at least make the media usable in more situations. This would not make everyone happy, but is the lowest entry cost to addressing these problems at all.
Also, we both know if they included rsync as a bff on the OS install media we'd get an ancient version that mangled extended attributes. :/ (If anything, rsync and maybe zsh would be good fits for that, though.[4])
[1] They should also put the dang repo definitions in a file in repos.d, not in yum.conf[2]
[2] Then give me two files with -online and -local repos already defined, with the pointing at /toolbox or something.[3]
[3] Then everything could be done on the YUM command-line.
[4] I prefer bash, but Apple moved to zsh as the default shell in macOS for some patent-related reason (maybe GPLv3 for newer bash?). I can't see IBM's lawyers allowing "including" that.
--
Stephen L. Ulmer
Enterprise Architect
Mainline Information Systems
(m) 352-870-8649