Installing a compiler by default

[Brent Larsen]

On the forums, we have an active thread looking for edgy suggestions.  
Many people have requested build-essential to be installed by default.  
No one has disagreed.

If you don't need a compiler, it doesn't exactly get in the way.  It 
doesn't clutter the menu, and it doesn't take up that much space.

On the other hand, if you DO need one, having it there already is 
incredibly helpful.  I would require users to hand install evolution and 
gaim before I required them to install the build-essentials.

This was especially painful in breezy because the CC variable was wrong 
even after a successful install of build-essentials.  If it had been 
pre-installed with the right gcc for the current kernel, then it would 
have saved an incredible amount of hassle.

I'm trying to think of ANY down side to putting it in there, and there 
just isn't one.

I needed it in breezy to get the most recent nvidia drivers because the 
nvidia-glx didn't support my new card at the time.  after a lot of 
hardship (when x server isn't running, apt-getting the right packages is 
really annoying, and no build-essential, and g++ etc is a major setback)

the only universal packaging system for Linux is a tarball, there are 
still an awfully lot of packages that are distributed that way, and the 
docs for installing them all assume you have gcc pre-installed.

If you want an opinion from a non-developer, there it is.
-Brent Larsen