Stuart Henderson <s...@spacehopper.org> wrote: > On 2013-07-29, h...@riseup.net <h...@riseup.net> wrote: > > URXVT > > * The code base is half the size of XTerm's > > given that you have to include things like glib, gettext and iconv in this, > somehow I doubt this... > > $ pkg_info -S rxvt-unicode > Information for inst:rxvt-unicode-9.18 > > Signature: > rxvt-unicode-9.18,@gdk-pixbuf-2.28.2p1,@gettext-0.18.2p2,@libiconv-1.14p0,@startup-notification-0.12p0,X11.15.2,Xft.8.0,Xrender.5.0,c.68.4,fontconfig.8.0,gdk_pixbuf-2.0.2800.0,glib-2.0.3600.1,gobject-2.0.3600.1,iconv.6.0,intl.6.0,m.8.0,perl.13.0,pthread.17.3,startup-notification-1.2.0,util.11.5 These are optional dependencies, it can be compiled without them given you do this by hand. A minimal installation doesn't require any gtk libs, neither it does gettext, iconv or perl. Most of the bloat is hidden inside the xterm which includes support for ancient DEC terminals (do you have one? let's swap the emulator with it, 'cause it's a "real thing"!); direct dependence on the X toolkit, large codebase of about 75.000 lines of code that lasts since '84 - that's almost 30 years! The problem, of course, is not with age actually. Unix rolls its history since the 60s and there are no competitors even on the horizon. It's not about amount of code either - look at vim, for instance. The problem is that this code in those 30 years has transformed in a series of unclear hacks here and there. And like in happened with the GCC the resulted architecture simply slows the monster down year by year.
Those things became evident not even now as the original rxvt project was started over 20 years ago. There's st as well, which is BSD-licenced, not GPL. With only one dependency. All right, people, just don't get mad on my proclaimations after all...
