On 25 Jan 2005, at 12:32 PM, Patrick Tescher wrote:
Well I guess the real question is: how big is QT + lame + freetype?
No, that's not the question. Regardless of their size, you still have numerous problems with separating the frameworks:
- If they aren't bundled, you need an installer instead of a drag-and-drop application. That also requires authentication, which is one of my least favorite consequences of installers.
- If the user removes them, the application will fail with no friendly error message, just the system crash dialog. Not a good user experience.
- If a different version of a library is installed in the same place, you could get random crashes due to incompatibilities, and MythTV gets unfairly labeled as buggy.
- It makes it harder for the user to uninstall. If it's not in one bundle, then they aren't sure if everything is cleaned up. If you have an uninstall script, it could remove something in use by another application. Either way, it's more of a hassle than dragging MythFrontend.app to the trash.
- Myth releases only occur once every few months; by the time a user is ready to upgrade, the releases of Qt, etc. will have changed anyway. (CVS binaries are a different point, but that's a limited audience I'm ignoring for the sake of this discussion.)
I was a Mac shareware developer for a few years, I know that these issues can give software a bad reputation, and create big support headaches for the community. A few megabytes of overhead is better than the potential for bad feelings among both the Mac and Myth communities.
- Jeremiah
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