Python stuff

[Nicolas Kassis]

Andrew Jorgensen wrote:

>On 2/20/06, Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>  
>
>>John Richard Moser wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>How about relegating these to ubuntu-devel-python, and also spawning an
>>>ubuntu-devel-c and ubuntu-devel-objective-c and ubuntu-devel-php and so
>>>on?  It'd save on bloat.
>>>      
>>>
>>Ubuntu is comitted to providing a complete Python development
>>environment out of the box. It's a conscious decision, made without
>>pretense of language neutrality, and it's very unlikely to change.
>>    
>>
>
>I could only find mention of python in the FAQ on the main site (as
>far as anything official goes).  I'd love to hear something more
>official about it.  When I first started hearing arguments about this
>I thought "big deal, it's not like it takes a lot of space or time"
>but if it's 41.8MB unpacked (not to mention the time it will spend
>compiling the modules, and the space those compiled modules will use)
>I think I would like to voice my objection as well.  But let's be
>reasonable about this.  Profanity certainly needn't be involved, and
>rarely helps your position.
>
>How do these modules rank according to popularity-contest?  How many
>Ubuntu users who want to learn python would have trouble installing an
>ubuntu-devel-python package?  Would it be worth somehow putting these
>devel packages into gnome-app-install?  Or some other way?
>
>My philosophy as a sysadmin has always been to keep things as standard
>as possible, so I prefer to keep any top-level meta-packages
>(ubuntu-desktop) installed.  Another philosophy I have is to not have
>anything I don't need installed.  That's not about saving disk space,
>it's about reducing complexity.  I don't mean to imply that having
>extra python modules is likely to cause an instability of any kind,
>but it just feels kinda yucky (contrary to my philosophies) to have
>all that stuff installed just in case one of my users wants to learn
>how to write an IM client using python.  The two pilosophies conflict
>because of this.
>
>I would also rather make room for mono than keep the extra python
>stuff if it came to that.  But regardless of what eventually shoves
>the python stuff off the install CD it seems that it's only a matter
>of time before it will make sense to leave it off and put some other
>great software in it's place.
>
> - Andrew Jorgensen
>
>  
>
Is 41.8 MB such a huge chunk ? Seriously there are many other packages
which are much larger that will see less use than the python packages.
The fact is in the future these packages might be used by other apps
that are not installed by default. Ubuntu is trying to provide an good
development framework for developers and users to extend and customize
Ubuntu. I thinks thats a good idea and warrant the 41.8 MB. Even a 6
years old machine can spare that much.  Using Desktop Ubuntu on anything
older that is much older is not smart. It's definitively the wrong tool
for the job.

Nic