Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Re: community spirit

[Jacob Gorm Hansen]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> > > > > > "Matthew" == Matthew Palmer <address@hidden> writes:

> So if you want lots of features, you will have lots of dependencies.
> The problem is that the availability and ease of use of standard parts
> encourages people to include YAGNIs, which is something that Tom is
> very good at avoiding.  But that's more a property of Tom's design
> sense than the extra effort he makes to make things standalone, IMO.

I don't care if it's foresigth or extra effort, both things are fine
with me.

>     >> Look at how much easier installing software is on Windows
>     >> versus on Linux.
>
> Look at how often you have to reinstall the whole system and all your
> apps to resolve DLL conflicts on Windows.  I don't call an install
> that often means reinstalling the whole system "easy".

I agree that Windows systems often need format c: (and I don't
particularly like using Windows, even though these days it is a far more
pleasant experience than it was a couple of years ago), but the problem
with tools like rpm and apt is that developers become lazy; on my debian
box:

# apt-get install evolution
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  epiphany-browser evolution-data-server gtkhtml3.2 libasn1-6-heimdal
libcompfaceg1 libebook8 libecal6 libedata-book1 libedata-cal5
libedataserver3 libegroupwise6 libgail-common libgail17 libgal2.2-1
  libgal2.2-common libglib2.0-0 libgssapi1-heimdal libgtkhtml3.2-11
libkrb5-17-heimdal libnspr4 libnss3 libsoup2.2-7 mozilla-browser mozilla-psm
Suggested packages:
  gnome-spell
Recommended packages:
  gnome-pilot-conduits spamassassin libglib2.0-data myspell-en-us
myspell-dictionary

In this case I have to install two or three web browsers (that I am
never going to use), kerberos support, GroupWise support, and various
other stuff, just to get a (very fancy) email client. Glad I'm on a fat
pipe, but people in my family (who I'd like to run Linux) are still on
modems. I am pretty sure spamassassin needs Perl too.

It seems to me that at least a handfull of these deps could have been
avoided, by proper engineering.

But back to the problem with scripting languages in the base system, see
http://perlmonks.thepen.com/165833.html , about an effort to remove Perl
from FreeBSD, in order to save 20MB on the base install.

Five years ago, Perl was hot and everybody loved it, nobody would argue
against relying on it for a base system. Today, better structured
languages like Python and Ruby are taking over, and soon, nobody will
argue against relying on Python 'which everyone has installed anyway'.
People said the same thing about Java a few years back.

So five years from now when X is the new cool scripting language, some
poor guy will have to fight to remove python-dependencies everywhere,
and most likely we give up, so we end up relying bash, perl, python,
ruby, lua, php, mono, and probably a few more, to get anything running
at all.  Funny thing, inside the box there is still an Intel chip, so
all this is bloat sits there just for the memory of some programmer who
had read on Slashdot that language X was cool this year.

The only clear winner here is Dell. And perhaps Microsoft, who can
afford to do proper software engineering.

Jacob