Against package removal
Markus Gaelli
gaelli at emergent.de
Thu May 8 17:30:26 UTC 2003
Anthony Hannan wrote:
>
> The latest updates include package removals. What does this buy me
> except a smaller image file? Who cares how big the image file is
> especially once its downloaded. Hard drives are big and virtual memory
> only loads what is used. So the only benefit is quicker initial
> download, which is just a one-time event. After that, you can download
> incremental updates.
>
(...)
> With a full image, I find all dependent code and make
> changes accordingly. This allows me to make wholesale changes,
> confidently. I wouldn't be able to build a robust closure compiler if
> I
> didn't have Etoys, MessageTally, ProcessBrowser, ImageSegments, etc.
> loaded because I wouldn't know to update them to work correctly with
> the
> new closure compiler.
Hi list,
I second this very strongly.
I am also all for a tiny image,
but _the_ image, which is _the_ image,
we are talking about, when we talk about
updates, for me still meant the "full" one.
>
> So I recommend:
> 1. Keep a single full image.
> 2. Add module framwork to the image (a la ClassBoxes). Modules not
> only facilitate better structured code, but allows different behavior
> to
> co-exist in the same image without clobbering each other. The module
> framework can be added without displacing the current behavior
> structure, allowing both structures to coexist and collaborate. Then
> classes and methods can be moved to modules as desired.
> 3. Work on distributing the image (using technology found in Magma,
> rST, etc). This will allow us to share the same image and build a
> collaborative world (a la Croquet).
>
Possible short term solution:
Let us just acknowledge, that we want both,
a minimal and a full image.
I think, it is already possible to build a smaller image and
a big one automatically, so we just should have the possibility
to download both of them. This wouldn't be a fork, as the big
and the small one would share exactly the same code-base.
When we have that, (Guides?) suffixing the mail-prefixes
like [ENH] or [UPDATE] with something like [FULL] or [MINIMAL]
could help to end this discussion.
As for me [FULL] means default, I could omit that
one, but maybe thats a kind of borderline here.
What do you think?
Cheers,
Markus
> Cheers,
> Anthony
>
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