doc: Discourage the use of texlive as input

* doc/contributing.texi (Submitting Patches): Discourage the use of texlive as
  input.

1 files changed, 10 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/doc/contributing.texi b/doc/contributing.texi
index c55eb63382..9f705d27a2 100644
--- a/doc/contributing.texi
+++ b/doc/contributing.texi
@@ -477,6 +477,16 @@ often better to clone the repository.  Don't use the @command{name} field in
 the URL: it is not very useful and if the name changes, the URL will probably
 be wrong.
 
+@item
+Try to minimize the weight of the inputs to make the transitive closure as
+small as possible (@pxref{Invoking guix size}).  Use @command{native-inputs}
+and @command{inputs} appropriately.  It's sometimes sufficient to use the
+@command{-minimal} version of a package as input, e.g. @command{bash-minimal}
+instead of @command{bash}.  In particular, avoid adding @command{texlive} as a
+dependency: because of its extreme size, it's both heavy on the build farms
+and on the users who would like to build or hack the package from source.  Use
+@command{texlive-tiny} or @command{texlive-union} instead.
+
 @end enumerate
 
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