From:	mert0407 AT sable DOT ox DOT ac DOT uk (George Foot)
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	Re: DJGPP is in WAY too many pieces
Date:	20 Jun 1997 09:24:48 GMT
Organization:	Oxford University, England
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Message-ID:	<5odi90$9mt@news.ox.ac.uk>
References:	<19970617192900 DOT PAA16139 AT ladder02 DOT news DOT aol DOT com> <33A6F444 DOT 19EF AT cs DOT com>
NNTP-Posting-Host:	sable.ox.ac.uk
To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway:	from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp

John M. Aldrich (fighteer AT cs DOT com) wrote:

: This should total no more than 17 megabytes or so, assuming that your
: hard disk uses an 8K cluster size.  Larger disks will require slightly
: more space.  This does not include the documentation viewer, DPMI host,
: or anything but the absolute minimum files.  See chapter 4.6 of the FAQ
: (v2/faq210b.zip) for a complete breakdown of package requirements.

What happened to the person who was making a cut-down version of DJGPP
v2.01? I don't recall the outcome of that, but after talking with someone
in IRC earlier this morning I reduced a working installation to just under
5 Mb, including the info viewer, CWSDPMI, the FAQ in text format, the libc
documentation, the info documentation and the GNU make utility. When
zipped up, this comes to just over two megabytes.

With the addition of the C++ files the uncompressed size increases to
about eight and a half megabytes. The compiler is quite suitable for basic
use; for instance, Allegro compiles normally.

Does this sort of distribution seem like a good or a bad idea? I can see
pros and cons - the pros are that no one could complain about DJGPP being
large any more; the C++ system would fit on three floppies and take less
than ten megabytes of disk space. As for cons, removing the less-used
executables is disabling features, and removing documentation is inviting
trouble. But at any time if the user finds a desirable feature is missing
he/she can download the appropriate zip file and add the extra
functionality in much the same way that one can add new GNU utilities to
the regular setup. Also, there is the possibility that I removed files
whose internal usage I was unaware of; it appears to work though.

There is also the question of licensing; the source would have to be
distributed by the same means. Does this mean the source for the included
packages would have to be separated from the other packages' source and it
would all be put in one zip file, or would it be sufficient just to
provide the standard sources (e.g. djlsr*.zip, g??*s.zip, etc)?

Any comments and arguements for/against this distribution would be
appreciated; personally at present I think it would be a good option to
provide.

-- 
George Foot <mert0407 AT sable DOT ox DOT ac DOT uk>
Merton College, Oxford

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