230 million SLOC

[Tshepang Lekhonkhobe]

On 10/28/05, Dan Martin <volume at dmartin.org> wrote:
> > Hello,
> > Any thoughts on this exciting article about 230 million SLOC (lines of
> > code) in Sarge. I'm surprised to search the lists and find no
> > comments... How about Ubuntu's size?
> >
> > http://www.upgrade-cepis.org/issues/2005/3/up6-3Amor.pdf
>
> My *opinion* is that the report is misleading.  This report is a count of
> SLOC of free software in Debian, not of Debian.  It refers to every package
> linked in Sarge (in specific repos) as being a piece of Debian.  As a
> result, nearly every line of code written in OSS is counted in the SLOC for
> Debian.

But they make it clear that it is software packaged in Debian as
opposed to have been written by Debian. And "it is one of largest
software compilations" is on the abstract. And by the way, all this
software is not merely linked like you suggest, but packaged
(debianised).

> I'm not criticizing Debian at all.  I'm criticizing the report.  For a
> useful comparison with another OS, you need to compare it with every piece
> of software that could be installed on it.

This report report clearly says that software that ships with Debian
makes it the largest software system in the world... not software that
can be installed in Debian. What's the problem with the report?