> I never understood why binaries are pulled. Even on a lowly > RPi it takes 4 minutes to build everything (half if you cut > out gs). And the 386 binaries are useless on non-386 > platforms! > > Why not just separate binary and source distributions? Then > include a file in the source distribution to warn people about > changes such as this one (or the one about 21bit unicode) and > how to avoid painting yourself in a corner. The binary distr. > should have a provision for *only* updating the kernel and > insisting the user boots off of it before further updates can > proceed.
i think this is a good idea. the 9atom usb installer builds the full set of executables for the arches you want as part of the install. it reduces the size of the install image by at least 20MB per installed architecture. given the sad state of broadband in many places, i'm hoping this is a good tradeoff. - erik
