On Wed, 16 May 2001, David I. Lehn wrote: > I'm packaging GStreamer (http://gstreamer.net/). It has a somewhat > small core but also a very large number of plugin wrappers for various > libraries.
[snip] > the core and not required if users/apps don't need them. > After I add support for recent additions of SDL and gnomevfs plugins the > total package count will be close to 30! [snip] > So my question: is this package explosion acceptable? Hi. My opinion only - 30 and growing is too large. Group the plugins by type if possible. I might prefer to download a little more if I use it than have everyone else suffer through Packages.gz bloat that doesn't use it. The kernel-* packages, with their multitude of versions, patches, revisions, etc, only come to a shade over 60 packages on my system.... Just a thought ... have the official debian packages be groups fairly broadly and set up an independent apt-source with more fine grained control? (Perhaps not a very GOOD thought, but it's one way to solve both problems of flexibility and lessening impact on the majority - opinions from the peanut gallery??). Dave
