On 10/16/05, Hubert Feyrer <feyrer@cs.stevens.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Oct 2005, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> >> Why not have ~one big "X" package?
> >> The list above reminds me of GNOME...
> >
> > It should be a lot better than GNOME.
> >
> > Some of this will never or rarely change. So when you want to update, y=
ou
> > only need to update one (or few packages).
> >
> > For packagers and for end-users it will make it a lot easier and faster=
 to
> > update in the long run. ... That's my hope :)
>
> See "GNOME". :)

Yes, there are a lot of packages in GNOME, but IMHO, it's better.  Everythi=
ng
is more modular, which is a good thing for applications: they can have a cl=
ean
dependency tree without pulling in "bloat".  E.g., you can have a GNOME "se=
rver"
that only needs console functionality without depending on the graphical
libraries.  (In KDE, you'd depend on "kdelibs", thus pulling in a lot
of unneeded
stuff.)  I guess this is why e.g., Debian, turn all kde* packages into meta
packages and provides all their contents as small and individual packages.

(The only "problem" comes during updates... where you have to do a lot more
packages than otherwise, and which is a somewhat slow process in
NetBSD/pkgsrc due to build failures, PLIST updates, etc... you know ;-)

--
Julio M. Merino Vidal <jmmv84@gmail.com>
http://www.livejournal.com/users/jmmv/
The NetBSD Project - http://www.NetBSD.org/