On Fri, 23 Jun 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
I definitely don't have an interest in fixing things that are not useful. That is certainly not the aim of Pd-extended. So much stuff is included because a) there is a ton of good code available for Pd, and b) people use this stuff. Before, if someone posted a patch where they used some non-standard externals, it was always a major chore for other to set up the externals so that patch worked. If everyone is on the same install, that problem goes away.
Yes, its a big package, and yes there is a lot of crap that is included. But these days, hard drive space is far cheaper and more abundant than Pd developer time. So it doesn't really seem worthwhile to spend much time removing cruft if it doesn't get in the way, and its safely tucked away in a libdir, where it can't do any harm to people unless they try to use it.
Another thing about a common build system is that a lot of the maintenance and debugged is then shared across platforms. This saves a lot of labor. I think that the debian packages would be less maintenance if their build system was pooled with Pd-extended, especially if you include pdp and pidip and others that aren't currently part of the "official" debian packages.
If I bundle up everything it will be pretty hard to get it into a state where it can enter the debian repository, especially for things like pdp (which is in debian) and pidip, which have their own build system, and what pd-extended does is mainly calling that, if I am not wrong.
If the packages are split up I can work on the problems separately, while other parts that are less complicated to get going can easily go through quality control.
I also like to have the possibility to only install pd, and not hundreds of externals which I won't use, and which I think noone should use and which just use up disk space.
If someone else did the work, would you be willing to accept it as the standard Debian packages?
I am not in the position to accept standard Debian packages, if you ask if I would upload such a package to Debian, I would say probably. It depends on the quality of the package (see above) and if the person who packages it is reliable enough.
Günter
.hc
Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize them, he must either change them, or perish. -William Carlos Williams
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