contrib

Keith Marshall schreef op 2016-01-08 22:22:
> On 08/01/16 06:58, waterlan wrote:
>> I was thinking, perhaps it's even better to move all the contrib
>> packages to mingw32. Only mingw32 and msys need to remain.
> 
> No; we segregated them for any one of a number of reasons[*], and I
> don't see why these should be any less valid today.  I prefer to keep a
> separate delivery infrastructure for these packages.
> 
> [*] Off the top of my head:
> 
> 1) They are of lesser importance to the project, than those in mingw32

You should not underestimate the importance. It's very convenient for 
users to have ready-to-use libraries at hand. Extra libraries make the 
whole project more attractive. Porting a library can be difficult and 
very time consuming.

>    and msys; (actually, it isn't likely that we would adopt contributed
>    MSYS packages anyway, since they could violate the minimalist goal).

Too minimalistic is also not good, this will make people go away.

> 2) There was some concern that contributors might walk away, and not
>    continue to maintain their contributions; (this in no way implies
>    that *you* would do so, but I contributed Xerces-C because we needed
>    it for mingw-dist's XML validation tool.  The version I provided is
>    still perfectly adequate for that purpose, and I have no incentive
>    beyond that, to keep abreast of upstream updates).

Main maintainers can also walk away. People walking away should not 
influence the package structure.

> 3) There is a possibility that we could choose to aggregate contributed
>    packages into a separate delivery channel; keeping them separate at
>    the outset makes it easier to accomplish that later.

That is adding complexity. I would rather keep it simple.

regards,

-- 
Erwin Waterlander
http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/

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