On Sat, Oct 24, 2020 at 3:22 PM Eric Auer <e.a...@jpberlin.de> wrote:
> > Hi Jim, good to think about the package list :-) > > If you ask me, the distro has grown large because a SMALL > number of packages are rather LARGE. Even then, when you > do not install all sources, it uses a lot less space: It > would be fine to keep the sources zipped until one wants > to work on a specific package. > Yes, that is why we have the option to install without source code. > > 3. Remove ... 7zdec, arj, cabext, lpq1, lzip, lzma, lzop, zoo > > I guess it would be okay to have those somehow separate, > although I wonder how large they are anyway. People might > enjoy ARJ and CAB support out of the box. > > I want to be careful about how many packages we include that do not really need to be there. I can see an argument to keep the ARJ tool, because some websites have archives of classic shareware games, and some of them come in ARJ format. But CAB files? No DOS system distributed files in CAB format - that's Windows. But p7zip is supposed to be able to extract CAB files (I haven't tried). > *Development* > > Can we pare down the list a bit? > > I guess the complete DJGPP ecosystem could be moved to > a separate group, it can get really big. > > I think creating a "sub-group" like one just for DJGPP is a bad idea. Think about this from the viewpoint of users who want to do programming under FreeDOS: They go into the "Development" group and look for a list of compilers and assemblers. "Oh, no DJGPP?" But wait - it's really there, if you go look somewhere else for it? DJGPP is a compiler, it should stay in "Development." > > 1. Move perl to the "Unix" group > > That would confuse me. Perl is multi-platform and it > clearly is a programming language. > I guess I don't know what to do with perl if we keep it. See also my other reply to Jerome where I mention perl - how outdated is our version? > > > 2. Keep BWBasic, the DJGPP packages, FASM, the FBC packages > > (FreeBASIC Compiler) fpc (FreePascal compiler), the GCC-IA16 > > packages, JWASM, NASM, OW (OpenWatcom C Compiler), and UPX > > I would move UPX to archivers, although it is not multi-file. > People will have to be aware that FBC, FPC, OW, DJGPP are big. > Is UPX really an "archiver" though? It's an *executable packer*. It's not a general file compression program. UPX should stay in "Development." > > 3. Remove bcc (Bruce's C Compiler), euphoria, insight, lua, regina, > runtime > > I would move RUNTIME to some generic tool category. I believe > Regina REXX was not very small, while some others are small? > I agree; if we keep it, Runtime belongs in a different group. (FWIW: I wrote this version of Runtime.) > > > *Editors* > > Not sure about these. I know there are a few here I'd like to keep: > > Blocek, Elvis, FED, Freemacs, MSEDIT, pico, Vim > > I would add SETEDIT because it can edit large files, maybe TDE? > Agree on both. We should keep SETEDIT and TDE on the list. > > *Graphical Desktop* > > We added GUIs a long time ago... > > Of course most GUI do not have lots of apps, so it > might be good to treat them similar to emulators by > offering them separately, outside the ISO. How about > the set of productivity apps ported by Georg Potthast? > I agree that OpenGEM is a good choice as general GUI. > > I tried to get rid of the GUI package group, years ago, but people wanted to keep it. :-) My general issue with GUIs is this: I think it's confusing to include a GUI on FreeDOS if it makes people think that GUI is basically a replacement for Windows. I think OpenGEM is different enough from Windows that people aren't likely to think it's "Windows." But oZone and SEAL are a bit Windows-like. > > > *Unix* > > The wiki page lists a few packages to remove based on > > duplicates or license concerns. > > Which ones would you remove? > > In my original email, I gave this link: http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Releases/1.3/Packages On that wiki page, if you scroll down to the "Unix" group, you'll see we're removing Tail and Uptime from that license group. > > *Utilities* > > We have a mix of things in this package group... > > > 2. Remove b64, blwcbc, bmp2png, bsum, daa2iso, edict, fdshell, > > It is good to have Base64 support and PNG support. > Blowfish, BSD sum and DAA/GBI are indeed exotic. > FDSHELL and EDICT (disk imaging) sound useful. > > > finddisk, flashrom, gifsicle, hip, hiram, pgme, > > pngcrush, sqlite, terminal, topspin, wptail, zdir,> zerofill > > Of course I suggest to keep FINDDISK and TERMINAL :-) > > FLASHROM sounds useful, depending on how many mainboard > chipsets it is able to BIOS update? > > HIP and GIFsicle sound a bit exotic. I do not see PGME > on the list, so no opinion about that. > > How does HIRAM compare to UMBPCI? > > PNGCRUSH is a bit exotic, as is SQLITE. If anything, > the latter could be kept as a programming language? > > TOPSPIN, WHIPTAIL and similar might be too special. > I have no opinion about ZDIR. > > ZEROFILL can be really useful before diskimage creation. > > > *We have both doslfn and lfndos, but do we need both? > > Is one better (more complete) than the other? > > Probably yes, but I do not remember. > > I agree that all utilities by Jack are useful :-) > > > I skipped some packages in that list. I don't have a > > good opinion on those. What do you think? > > If you could make a list of those? > >
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