Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 13:39:24 +0100 (MET) From: J Wunsch <j@uriah.heep.sax.de> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers) Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/usr.bin/vi Makefile Message-ID: <199612311239.NAA24824@uriah.heep.sax.de> In-Reply-To: <9987.852019784@critter.dk.tfs.com> from Poul-Henning Kamp at "Dec 31, 96 09:09:44 am"
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(Moved to -hackers)
As Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> ("text-processing" is another that springs to mind if catman works now.)
catman works, but of course, in order to _run_ catman, you need
Perl. :) But then, you also need the `text-processing' subset for
it as well.
The catman distribution is just there for those people who will never
upgrade their manpage sources, so they never need to reformat them.
While the transparent update was good for fast machines, it can take
a tremendous amount of time for a slower one.
Well, OTOH, we also need to install X11 and ports/packages catpages
then. Otherwise, troff won't be optional still... :-(
I think, most people will end up with the full set of binaries anyway.
Only people with 100 MB or smaller disks will think about the bloat.
At a time where you can't even buy a disk smaller than 1 GB, we should
probably not waste too much energy in too much splitting.
> How about adding a src/perl directory tree along the lines of src/gnu ?
src/tcl, too. :-)
But hey!, then you have to provide four different binaries for `vi',
did you realize this? One vi without anything, one with Tcl, one with
Perl, one with both.
Do you see where the problems arise, and why i said we should probably
not waste too much time?
> And just make absolutely damn sure it truly is optional, ie: no perl
> in /etc/rc and so on.
And no Tcl in sysinstall?
And no compiler at all? => We start thinking about .o/.a file only
kernel dists? And how do we handle kernel options then?
There's already one system doing it this way, since they didn't want
to hand out the sources... They ended up with a fairly bloated and
often slow kernel in SysV. ISTR that people suspected they've also
built a kitchensink in...
Get me right: i don't have any argument about splitting, or keeping
the required minimum low. However, developer's time is the scarcest
resource in our project, and we should not waste it too much. If Tcl
or Perl save us 50 % development time for some particular purpose,
then by all means, use that. The diskspace is much cheaper than that
wasted time!
Well, it's already afternoon here in Europe, i'll be off for the
Silvester party now... Happy New Year everybody!
--
cheers, J"org
joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)
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