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Re: Minimal Guile
From: |
Mike Gran |
Subject: |
Re: Minimal Guile |
Date: |
Tue, 3 Jan 2012 18:09:54 -0800 (PST) |
> From: Mark H Weaver <address@hidden>
> What is the advantage of including our own little read-only filesystem,
> when every OS already provides this functionality? Is it really
> significantly easier to install 3 files than to install 300?
>
> Admittedly, I can see how it might make a psychological difference.
> Somehow, people get the feeling that a package is huge and bloated when
> it contains a large directory structure, whereas a single file of the
> same size (or even larger) seems significantly less obtrusive.
>
> However, I'm not sure that this psychological difference is enough to
> justify the reduced flexibility of such an approach.
>
> Is there an advantage that's not merely psychological?
No, there is no advantage beyond the psychological for any system that
uses the standard Unix-like filesystem hierarchy and has a decent
package manager.
There are some theoretical corner cases where it could be useful.
Don't know if these would ever occur in practice.
- Systems that don't use a Unix-like filesystem heirarchy
- Programs that are distributed in a folder whose root location
can change
- Programs that use Guile as an extension but want to limit its
library for some reason.
It is all branding, or marketing, I guess. And fun, of course. I thought
that, as a hack, it would be fun to try.
Regards,
Mike