Die GNU autotools

[Nadav Har'El]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011, Elazar Leibovich wrote about "Re: Die GNU autotools":
> Few years ago, you were correct, harddisks were thin, memory was spare, and
> if you could use a preinstalled library it'll be a great benefit.
> Nowadays, developer time is expensive, QA time is expensive, support time is
> expensive. Memory is cheap, CPU is cheap, disk space is cheap. So I'd rather
> include another Megabyte of library the user already have, than make
> building and supporting my software more complicated=more expensive.

I think we were talking about free software.

With free software, developer time is "cheap" (in the sense that if you don't
do something, someone else with more free time or more dedication, can),
while user resources are expensive (in the sense that if program Y uses
half the memory of X and does the same thing, I'll just switch to Y without
looking back).

> As mentioned, Mathworks would rather include a compatible JVM with matlab,
> then use the one availible on the computer. The cost of that is miniscule
> (another 20Mb on the disk, maybe a bit more memory, assuming the user is

This kind of corporate thinking doesn't fly with free software.
Can you imagine a Linux distribution like Fedora or Ubuntu coming with a
dozen copies of the JVM, just because the devlopers wouldn't bother themselves
to use the system's on copy of JVM?

And you know what, I once used a commercial instant-messaging client which,
like you described, came with its own copy of a JVM. When I realized it was
taking 100 MB of memory, and (at the time) I had only 512 MB, I simply
dumped it and replaced it with pidgin, which took 1/10th the amount of memory.

> This is not always true, but I think that nowadays adding a library of 100Kb
> to almost any software, *always* costs less than maintaining it with ifdefs.

Not to the users.


-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Thursday, Jan 13 2011, 8 Shevat 5771
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Tact: The ability to describe others as
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |they see themselves. - Abraham Lincoln