Re: [Administrivia] On ruby and contrib/

[Greg Troxel <gdt@ir.bbn.com>]

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Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:

> On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Greg Troxel <gdt@ir.bbn.com> wrote:
>>
>> git is a core tool that people use on almost the smallest of boxes,
>> perhaps even replacing rcs for managing local config files.  On such
>> machines, even perl may be large, but a second scripting language seems
>> excessive.
>
> You can compile Git without any of them.

That ignores the 99% of people who use packaged versions.  The question
is really "Should the standared approach for building be to use or not
use dependency X?".  Really this should be expressed in the README, and
it creates expectations for someone who just installs the git package in
terms of whether pieces of functionality are there.  Packagers generally
should be reading the README and including required/recommended
dependencies and not including optional dependencies (in the main
package).  The information in INSTALL is pretty reasonable, but it
doesn't really clearly say "if you hand someone git built without perl,
it is { perfectly ok but missing a fringe optional feature | deficient
because "git add -p" won't work }.   I'm leaning towards the "deficient"
camp.

So "you can compile git without X" should really translate into "when
one runs the default build following the instructions, and does not take
affirmative steps to use X, X should not be used or depended on".  If it
doesn't mean that, it doesn't help the packaging/expectations discussion.

It's of course fine that one can hand-compile a smaller than standard
but still useful subset.  But that's entirely different from the
definition of normal.

>> On a NetBSD 6 i386 system, the size of the ruby193-base
>> binary package (as installed) is 25 MB (vs 15 MB for the git base
>> package, which lacks gitk and docs).  (Presently, the git base package
>> defaults to requiring python and installing the git_remote_helpers, but
>> I think that's a bug.)  perl is 54 MB.
>
> That's only the default, if the default doesn't suit you, don't use
> the default.

It's not about what I want.  It's about making choices that affect other
people, and trying to find a plan that will be overall reasonable;
that's the essence of stewardship in packaging.  Compiling for just
myself is far easier.



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