Die GNU autotools

[Omer Zak]

Chiming in late, and I apologize if someone already mentioned the
following point in E-mail which I didn't read yet.

On Thu, 2011-01-13 at 13:30 +0200, Elazar Leibovich wrote:

> 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.
> 
> 
> 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 using another JVM software simultaneously), and
> even if the only thing it'll save you is the support call "it says JRE
> 1.2 is not supported, please upgrade. How do I do that?", it probably
> well worth it, not to mention the reduced cost of testing, the freedom
> of using more advanced API, etc etc. 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.

Eventually, the library versions will be harmonized by the Linux distributions' maintainers, who undertake to package and distribute your software, if your software is Free.

So the ones who would invest in effort to optimize memory and hard disk usage by sharing libraries among versions and harmonizing library versions - are the ones who are in the best position to choose which libraries are worth the effort to eliminate duplicate copies.

It is a nice division of labor.  The original software developers don't
need to worry about compatible libraries.  Then if their software is
successful and sufficiently widely-used to be added to Linux
distributions, then its use of libraries will be optimized by other
people.

DISCLAIMER:  I am a Debian user, and the above observation is based upon
what I see from the process of developing Debian releases.  If you use
another distribution, YMMV.

--- Omer


-- 
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