Shreevatsa R wrote:
On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 3:47 AM, Ryan Schmidt
<[email protected]> wrote:
Mac OS X is not Debian. The Mac way is to provide not as many
options as
possible, but as few options as possible. Meet the needs of most
of the
users with the default setup, and provide a few options for
everyone else.
As a consumer, I do not enjoy having to select amongst 37
different types of
toothpaste at the grocery store. More choices is not always better.
http://www.cafeaulait.org/images/remotes.png
These are very good words! I couldn't agree more.
This would be a good starting point to mention my pet peeve with
MacPorts, which is the excessive use of variants.
Ideally, all ports would enable by default all the features that users
might want, and only leave as variants those features which are
*definitely* undesirable to significantly many people (and definitely
desirable for significantly many). Instead, some ports try to make
every feature a separate variant. This is entirely unnecessary: disk
space is cheap and shouldn't be considered a cost of enabling the
feature by default.
I thought the whole point of doing Ports for Mac was to provide
choice...
Why else would it require you to install Developer Tools and go mucking
about in the Terminal, if it wasn't that you *wanted* to choose things ?
Wouldn't you rather install the provided binary in the graphic
interface,
and be happy with the choices that the vendor has already made for you ?
Blaming current bugs and shortcomings with variants on choice seems
unfair.
--anders
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