From: probreak@cis.ksu.edu (James M Chacon) Subject: Re: Binary Distributions Date: 6 Feb 1993 03:25:44 GMT
mdw@db.TC.Cornell.EDU (Matt Welsh) writes:
>In article <4642.1189.uupcb@satalink.com> john.will@satalink.com (John Will) writes:
>>Seriously, you keep ignoring probably the
>>most important point, MOST FOLKS DON'T HAVE THE DISK SPACE TO COMPILE
>>SOME OF THE LARGER PACKAGES. Why is that so difficult to understand?
>>Sure, I'd love to have all the source for everything around, but it's
>>just not practical!
>Sorry, bub. That's the hard rap in the world of UNIX. We can't provide
>binaries for everything, not even the kernel.
>mdw
And considering there are only 3-4 packages that most people would consider
to large to compile. X, TeX, and gcc are 3 of the larger ones I have done,
but even then I could do each one on a 150M drive. Thats with only having
around 40-50M free for each compile.
For some reason people seem to think they have to keep all the source online.
This is strange, since 90% of it can be archived off onto floppies or
tapes except when needed. I can fit the X sources onto 10 1.4M floppies, and
thats the biggest package I have yet to do. Most of the stuff would only
have to be compiled once anyhows, so if its not changing you can just
delete the source when you are done. I don't keep TeX around for this
reason, since once its installed its not really gonna change.
James