Re: Bob Weiner: Re: efs 1.14 and XEmacs 19.12
Chuck Thompson (cthomp@cs.uiuc.edu)
Wed, 09 Aug 1995 09:32:05 -0500
Bob> To recap, my suggestion was that an EFS distribution similar
Bob> in size to the current ange-ftp (which basically provides the
Bob> same behavior with fewer features) be made. The maintainers
Bob> of EFS seemed to agree that a 'core' distribution is a good
Bob> idea since they had already created such a thing. I was not
Bob> objecting to the size of a particular package but to the
Bob> growth in space needed to provide nearly the same
Bob> functionality as is already provided.
EFS has more functionality than ange-ftp therefore it should be
allowed to use more disk space. I am strongly against putting
modified versions of packages into the distribution. It has always
ended up causing more problems than it is worth. Even if a smaller
version exists it isn't worth it. There will be all kinds of postings
of the 'I thought EFS was supposed to do foobar' variety.
Having an efs-lite would mean a space savings for the XEmacs
distribution of about 500K. That is pretty negligible compared to the
overall size of the distribution. XEmacs already includes a majority
of the major elisp packages. It is a little late to be worrying about
saving half a meg by including only half of one it doesn't.
I'll repeat what I said in an earlier message. We should be providing
a smaller XEmacs distribution for people who do have limited disk
space. But curtailing the growth of the primary XEmacs distribution
is worthless. It is already too big for the people for whom a 'lite'
distribution would be a win. A smaller distribution will be
accomplished primarily by completely eliminating packages such as w3,
VM, hyperbole and oo-browser. Not by including smaller versions of
them.
-Chuck