Hi,
Sorry, I'm late to this thread, but ... I don't feel like reading ten
pages before quickly responding to this misunderstanding.
On Sat, Oct 24, 2020 at 2:39 PM Jim Hall <jh...@freedos.org> wrote:
>
> Over time, FreeDOS has grown to include lots of interesting programs. The
> FreeDOS 1.2 and 1.3RCx distributions are very big.
>
> As we look to the next FreeDOS 1.3 Release Candidate, I think we should
> consider removing some packages from the FreeDOS distribution.
>
> To be clear: I am not suggesting deleting packages or programs from the
> FreeDOS archive at ibiblio.
> There's lots of useful and interesting programs there. But I don't think we
> need to include everything in the FreeDOS distribution.
If you keep networking (FDNET), at least for QEMU and/or VBox, then
you can offload as much as you want to further downloads. That way is
simpler, IMHO. But clearly we're not trying for extreme minimalism
here (like MetaDOS).
> Here are my thoughts from the FreeDOS 1.3 package list (wiki)
>
> Archivers
> Do we really need all of those archivers? For example, who needs Zoo these
> days? My suggestions:
> 1. Move bz2, gzip, and tar to the "Unix" group - these are replicas of Unix
> tools
> 2. Keep zip, unzip, p7zip
> 3. Remove the other packages: 7zdec, arj, cabext, lpq1, lzip, lzma, lzop, zoo
>
> *Note that p7zip can unpack a ton of other file formats, so we don't need
> these other archivers anyway.
I've explained several times that p7zip is very buggy. It has many
versions (for DOS/DJGPP) and many flaws. I do not consider it as
"standalone" nor totally stable. (Even worse, our package is an
archaic version, 4.65.) In particular, very few people seem inclined
to rebuild to even attempt fixes. I've done so before (despite limited
skills) and did some fixes with 9.20, but it's never going to be
perfect. Even M.K.'s latest build of 16.02 I didn't mirror
(particularly because it included non-Free RAR support, which you
dislike). I also didn't find the time to diff his changes since he
just included one lump source archive instead of a separate patch. His
build still has many bugs and idiosyncrasies due to the POSIX nature
of the port (and the Win32-centric nature of the original sources). It
doesn't mean it's useless, far from it, but it is indeed tedious to
use.
7zdec is very simplified, so it lacks some things ("-x!" can be very
useful in rare circumstances), but it's much cleaner and smaller, if
you're only interested in simply unpacking entire .7z archives. I
would definitely not exclude it. (In fact, I emailed you recently
saying I personally wanted to update it to a newer version.)
> Development
> Can we pare down the list a bit? We have a lot of packages here, but I don't
> think we need them all.
> For example, we should include the tools we know we'll need to compile the
> different FreeDOS utilities.
> I'd also like to keep the GCC related packages, and other packages that
> remain popular.
By far, DJGPP and FPC take up the most space, IIRC, but few people
here use them (from FD packages, I mean, most just grab newer versions
upstream). That doesn't mean they aren't incredibly useful, just that
we never seemed motivated enough to update the DJGPP packages (which
get even huger in newer versions). I halfway suggested before that we
make "DJGPPLITE" (GCC 2.95.3 or 3.46?) or "FPCLITE", but nobody seemed
to even acknowledge the usefulness of that idea. (Yes, I saw Andris'
recent email about DJGPP 2.05 / GCC 10.2. Honestly, I'm not sure how
to 100% bundle all the appropriate sources [MPC? MPFR?], which are
huge and impossible to build in raw DOS anyways.) AFAIK, there's
little reason to have a separate BinUtils anyways since no other
package relies on it besides GCC (which, in newer versions, also
requires newer BinUtils). FPC doesn't really need it anymore, and FBC
has its own older version.
> Editors
> Not sure about these. I know there are a few here I'd like to keep:
> Blocek, Elvis, FED, Freemacs, MSEDIT, pico, Vim
Probably not, honestly, but it's not the end of the world. There's too
much stuff. I'm not direly opposed to anything that works, but some
things are very flawed.
> Networking
> I don't run FreeDOS with a network, so I don't have any opinions on these
> packages. What do you think?
FDNET just borrows from Crynwr, but without it we can't have a working
packet driver under QEMU. I would consider removing it "a downgrade /
loss of useful functionality" (but maybe you're still worried about
the confusing licensing text??).
> Utilities
> We have a mix of things in this package group. I think some of these were
> interesting long ago, but probably aren't used anymore and can be deleted. My
> recommendations:
> 1. Keep aefdisk, ansimat, bootfix, callver, cdrcache, cdrom2ui clamav +
> clamdb, cpied, cwsdpmi, dialog, dn2, dog, dos32a, dosutil, doszip + dzemm,
> fdimples + fdisrc, fdnpkg, fdshield, fdtui, foxcalc, foxtype, gcdrom, gnuchcp
> + gnufonts, hexcomp, localize, lptdrv, memteste, ntfs, pcisleep, pdtree,
> pg, rcal, rdisk, search, setlock, shareext, shsufdrv, slowdown, spool,
> srdisk, stamp, switchar, udvd2, uhdd, uide, unrtf, usbdos, utf8tocp, V8power,
> wcd, wde, xdel, xfdisk, xkeyb, xmgr
MemTestE is hard to use, IIRC (or at least to rebuild). Not sure if
"NTFS" works reliably. I don't think ClamAV is totally reliable
(FDAV?). Some other practical caveats with some of those, etc.
PCIsleep is extremely small but useful, no advantage to removing it
("keep", as you said). IIRC, "UIDE" is less functional than "UHDD" and
not preferred at all except for limited-space floppy users. Not sure
how reliable XDel is either. SRdisk isn't horribly bad but mostly
redundant (compared to ShsuRdrv or similar RAM disk) and somewhat less
useful (harder to load, bloatier).
Yeah, even that's too much stuff, some of which will be very rarely
used. I would not necessarily include most of that. Then again, for a
"full" distro, it matters less, people expect extras.
It might be better to explicitly ask certain power users which utils
there they "cannot live without"! (Or is that what you're doing here?)
I could live without most of it.
> 2. Remove b64, blwcbc, bmp2png, bsum, daa2iso, edict, fdshell, finddisk,
> flashrom, gifsicle, hip, hiram, pgme, pngcrush, sqlite, terminal, topspin,
> wptail, zdir, zerofill
Bsum and Finddisk are extremely small (but useful), so you wouldn't be
saving anything by removing them.
Is Terminal Eric's communications program? Similarly, quite small but
useful in a pinch.
Zdir may be redundant (and IIRC, the package was prepared by Jerome),
but it's also very small and still somewhat useful, even to me. But
it's not a deal-breaker. (Remove the config program, if that part bugs
you.)
Edict was written by Jerome, IIRC, and I forget the details, but I
think he had good reasons for it.
> *We have both doslfn and lfndos, but do we need both? Is one better (more
> complete) than the other?
Never used LFNDOS much, so I would almost always prefer DOSLFN.
> **If I missed any of Jack's utilities, that's an oversight from me. I would
> want to keep them.
The only ones you probably direly need are UDVD2 and/or UHDD. While
it's cool to have yet another XMS driver or RAM disk, we don't truly
"need" them.
(Take this as constructive criticism, totally optional. Just friendly
advice. I'm not opposed to anything "good".)
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