This message is in response to ticket 43881 at
https://osdn.net/projects/svardos/ticket/43881 where Robert says:
On the error list at http://www.svardos.org/?p=repo&showlogs=1#logs I noticed several programs, e.g., APPEND, ASSIGN, which were part of MS-DOS, but are currently no core package in SvarDOS.
When I created the initial version of SvarDOS, I wanted to make it as
lean as possible, and excluded some of such "MSDOS-like" programs that I
myself rarely used (append, assign, debug, print, ...). This was to keep
the number of installation floppies as low as possible, so SvarDOS
included only things that are truly critical: disk management (fdisk),
shell (COMMAND.COM) and a few programs that managing files would be a
pain without (move, tree, xcopy, ...).
Now, what are the options for these MSDOS-like programs that are not
part of CORE?
1. make them all part of CORE "because they were in MSDOS 5.x and
SvarDOS tries to mimic that", we might go from 3 5.25 install floppies
to 4, but is it really a problem?
2. move them to a separate directory (progs)
3. tolerate their presence in bin/ by flagging them as some kind of
"core-extended" packages (not present on install floppies, but user can
still install them via pkgnet)
While I am pretty sure option 2 is plain stupid, I am mitigated between
options 1 and 3. I think I have a preference for 3, but then it requires
writing some kind of rules that say what kind of MS-DOS-like packages
are not part of SvarDOS, and on what criterion. I don't really know how
to put that in writing objectively.
There is one thing that is important to me, though: it's that the entire
SvarDOS installation stays on a single 2.88 diskette so it can still be
installed from a CD via a BIOS-emulated drive, ie. without requiring any
kind of drivers. Currently we have about 280K of available space on the
2.88 image. That will increase to some 800K when SvarCOM will replace
FreeCOM, so still "a lot" of place... although we should keep some space
for including networking drivers in the future for users to have an
easier access to networking.
Ideas? Opinions? Suggestions for some formal "option 3" rules?
Mateusz
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