Re: Bloat in the Emacs Windows package

["Óscar Fuentes" <ofv@wanadoo.es>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> Since then, both bandwidth and disk space has gotten cheaper. But I
>> bet there are still lots of situations where Emacs' smallness is
>> important. Especially in poorer parts of the world.
>
> Of course.  But those situations need special-purpose packages, and
> each one of those will need a volunteer dedicated to produce and
> support it.  The popular demand clearly shifted to having the
> comprehensive packages with everything included.
>
> Feel free to volunteer to produce a bare-minimum Emacs package for
> such situation.

We have the no-deps package, but with dozens of MB of debug info and a
duplicated large binary. I doubt this benefits 0.1% of the Emacs user
base. And that benefit is just a minor convenience for them.

OTOH, the bigger the file to download, the less people will get it.
People that will use something else. For a political (or social, if you
prefer) project as GNU/Emacs, this is not acceptable when you can
significantly reduce the download with a few trivial changes (1).

I live on Western Europe and know plenty of people who access the
Internet through metered and/or slow connections.

And then we have the issue with general bloat in IT and the associated
waste. I feel morally obligued to not contribute to that waste.


1. Using a better compression method, such as 7z, probably will reduce
the download significantly.