[PD-dev] updating 'puredata' package to 0.42.5

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Sat, 21 Nov 2009, Chris McCormick wrote:

> I should note that Pd itself is not very modular in terms of the way 
> it's distributed, it's just that there is not a lot of stuff in it.

If (random popular interpreter) Python or Ruby or PHP were nearly as 
modular as Pd is, you'd need to download your for-loop statement from a 
third party, and then you'd have people arguing on the mailing-list that 
they should be able to run Ruby without a for-loop statement interpreter 
if they damn well please. Then you'd have at least five different 
representations for text strings, in which the only one considered 
standard is the one that is a big honking memory leak by design; and each 
of the non-leaking representations would be pushed for by a minority of 
specialists and rejected by a majority of them. THAT's modularity!

> I guess the difference is that when disk space is constrained I have the 
> option to install or not install something with Python, whilst I don't 
> really have that option with pd-extended. If you do an `apt-cache search 
> python-` you will see a ton of stuff that you can optionally install. I 
> think the Python VM and language strike the right balance with what hey 
> choose to be 'batteries included' and what they leave out. Possibly 
> pd-extended still needs to find that balance.

Even though pd-extended is built as one set of things, there's nothing 
that prevents you from designing a scheme of .deb files that cuts that one 
set of binaries (made from a single "make" command) into a 
conveniently-compartmentalised system designed so that each package 
doesn't pull in too many other packages at once (recursively speaking).

I don't know whether debian packaging really wants you to have one 
makefile per package, but if ever it's the case, you can probably fake it 
so as to avoid having to split a makefile-system that has an advantage at 
being all together. the package-splitting would be only there to avoid 
pulling too many deps at once, just to avoid apt-get install pd-extended 
telling you «the following 242 dependencies will be ADDED. Once installed 
it will take 3859 Megs. Do you want to continue? (Y/Y)». But seriously, so 
far, I don't recall being really annoyed by the number of deps in the 
pd-extended debs.

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| Mathieu Bouchard, Montréal, Québec. téléphone: +1.514.383.3801