Re: Anybody working on removing sendmail from base?

[Mike Porter <mupi@xxxxxxxxx>]

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On Monday 29 September 2003 02:10 pm, Justin C. Sherrill wrote:
> Mike Porter wrote:
> > I'm sorry but this seems counterproductive.   If there is going to be a
> > perl and a cc on the system, even if it is old an outdated, it is a waste
> > of bandwidth to force users to install one.  Especially in the case where
> > you are installing, say, a gcc, which is exactly the same as the system
> > version. This wastes bandwidth for the installation process, as well as
> > disk space in having two of the same program installed.  In addition to
> > that, it doesn't help to resolve the issue where user A wants one
> > version, and user B wants a different version.
>
> The bandwidth waste seems minimal, given that disk space is plentiful, and
> most everyone installs ports anyway.  Would the minor amount of disk space
> used be worse than having to deal with outdated system parts?
>

Speak for yourself.  I have plenty of bandwidth on my cable modem, but 
precious little hard drive space.  One of the major factors that attracts me 
to bsd over other free OSes is the fact that it will still run (quite well, 
in fact) on older systems.  I have a 486 motherboard sitting around, and a 
325 MB hard drive, and I can install BSD on it, and have a router/mail server 
that performs fairly well....even linux won't run on less than a pentium 
anymore; I can't get any of the 'major' distros to even install on my P1/MMX 
laptop with 32MB RAM, yet bsd installed without a hitch. 

> Besides, if we are using variant symlinks to allow software to be built
> using particular versions of a compiler|interpreter|library, wouldn't that
> end up bringing in multiple versions of software anyway?
>
yes, but not two versions of the same package, as your solution appears to 
advocate.

>
> That was my concept; keep the system-required utilities separate so that
> users and porters cannot access them, and instead they track only the
> appropriate port for the system.  This doesn't prevent the use of variant
> symlinks for different versions of software on the system.
>


I think the crux of our difference of opinion is right here:  in my vision, if 
gcc is removed from the base system, it would be becuase there is no need for 
it in the base system.  As it happens, there is really very little *need* for 
any compiler at all, unless you want to make a customized kernel.  Granted, 
you will see performance improvements by doing a custom kernel, sometimes 
pretty significant, but the choice should be mine.  Also, I don't consider 
myself a license nazi, but IMHO as much as possible, we should remove gpl'ed 
stuff from the base system.  I have nothing against installing gpl software 
on one's own computer ( i have a lot of it on mine) but I think we as 
end-users should ultimately be allowed to make that decsion on our own.  I 
know it goes against the grain to think about a "real" or unix-like OS 
shippig without a compiler, but at the same time, I know that there is no 
need to have a compiler built in to the base system.

mike
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