Re: Minimal Guile

[Mike Gran <spk121@yahoo.com>]

> From: Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>

> What is the advantage of including our own little read-only filesystem,
> when every OS already provides this functionality?  Is it really
> significantly easier to install 3 files than to install 300?
> 
> Admittedly, I can see how it might make a psychological difference.
> Somehow, people get the feeling that a package is huge and bloated when
> it contains a large directory structure, whereas a single file of the
> same size (or even larger) seems significantly less obtrusive.
> 
> However, I'm not sure that this psychological difference is enough to
> justify the reduced flexibility of such an approach.
> 
> Is there an advantage that's not merely psychological?

No, there is no advantage beyond the psychological for any system that
uses the standard Unix-like filesystem hierarchy and has a decent
package manager.

There are some theoretical corner cases where it could be useful.
Don't know if these would ever occur in practice.
- Systems that don't use a Unix-like filesystem heirarchy
- Programs that are distributed in a folder whose root location
  can change
- Programs that use Guile as an extension but want to limit its
  library for some reason.

It is all branding, or marketing, I guess.  And fun, of course. I thought
that, as a hack, it would be fun to try.

Regards,

Mike