>Number:         23530
>Category:       misc
>Synopsis:       Suggestion: calculate the size needed to compile world on each platform before new release
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    misc-bug-people
>State:          open
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Sat Nov 22 01:15:00 UTC 2003
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Michal Pasternak
>Release:        NetBSD 1.6.1
>Organization:
Good People With Bad Reputation
>Environment:
n/a
>Description:
"How much disk space do I need to do it".

Many, many people ask this question before bulding world.

I don't know anything about NetBSD build-before-release procedure, but I
think it would be a pity to include "du -c | tail -1" somewhere for each
platform, wouldn't it?

du(1) would calculate the size of disk space needed to perform a
build for each architecture. Such information could be included in docs later
(FAQ or maybe an attachment to release-announcement?)

I am of course talking about the diskspace needed to build world, not
about size of world after building.
     
In my opinion it would be really useful to give user a taste about building
world - the user should know, if diskspace requirement to do a full build is
50 MB, 200 MB, 700 MB, 1.5 GB or 3 GB. 

Yes, it's not a big problem if you respond me how much does it take now.
Would you like to respond to such question again after some time?

Adding such calculation could also help people start up with -current:
current snapshot build calculates free space requirement, and then people
know, how much they need if they want to start up using (building) -current.

This feature should be relativley easy to introduce and it would give really
valuable information to some users.

Discussion?

1) "Hard drives are cheap, who would need such info?"

   - please remember, that not everyone has big HDD. Many people use NetBSD
     on old hardware, because of NetBSD's efficiency.

2) "Size of a build could be different, depending on compile-time options"
   
   - I am talking about a standard build, done on NetBSD project's machines.
     Depending on the options the user chooses to build NetBSD on his/hers
     machine, the size could be different, of course - but in real world -
     would it be much?
     
     As I said before, such option would be intended just to give user a
     taste of the disk space needed. We could assume, that taking the 
     value multiplied by 1.1 or 1.2 would be the minimal safest margin 
     of free disk space needed to build world.
     
>How-To-Repeat:
>Fix:
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: