On Sat, 30 Dec 2000, Al B. Snell wrote:

# Why is X in the base system?

X isn't in the base system.

Technically, neither are the games, the man pages, the miscellaneous stuff,
or the development tools (compiler and toolchain).  We broke those out.

/etc is only broken out so that during an upgrade you don't clobber what
you already had which defines your system.

# Why gcc? Why can't they be packages? Is it
# that essential that the bbase system be able to compile itself, as opposed
# to having binary packages for gcc and make available so the ability to
# compile stuff can be bolted on if needed? Many systems could benefit from
# losing the compiler... my Web server cluster, for example! Each server
# needs only NFS, sshd for management, Apache, and the tools in /bin right
# now!

I thought you could avoid loading the compiler, since it's in comp.tgz.
[If they're not already there, that would also be a good place to put the
 static libraries -- you don't need them if you're not building anything.]

We just have a lower degree of granularity with certain "packages" --
they're rather like boulders or other large rocks, which is fine considering
the functions they serve.  I don't care for, i.e., Linux's "everything is
a package" bit -- you have to add packages for ls, ftp, ypbind, ypserv
(yes, they're separate), etc.  It's ridiculous.

I could see a LITTLE more granularity (that's a buzzword I'm starting to
despise as it's getting overused) in that maybe we might split base into
a base/networking kind of deal.  But let us not degenerate into the pasta-
fest which is Linux.  It's really not as great as the less-educated would
have us believe.

# ABS

				--*greywolf;
--
*BSD: daemonic power.