From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ricardo Wurmus Subject: Re: Stating the size of ecosystems in descriptions (Was: Re: Gauche description) Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2019 20:55:56 +0100 Message-ID: <877ef4idgz.fsf@elephly.net> References: <87sgxt6ijv.fsf@ambrevar.xyz> <9b157f660f14ccf542cfa4fe793cc3db@riseup.net> <87imyo7ohq.fsf@ambrevar.xyz> <87pnswvem1.fsf@gmail.com> <87a7k0il0w.fsf@elephly.net> <87bm4g7bs3.fsf@ambrevar.xyz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.92]:41152) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gjrIq-00023M-Qj for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 16 Jan 2019 14:56:46 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gjrIl-0006rB-T7 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 16 Jan 2019 14:56:42 -0500 Received: from sender-of-o53.zoho.com ([135.84.80.218]:21777) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gjrIl-0006Z2-Bs for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 16 Jan 2019 14:56:39 -0500 In-reply-to: <87bm4g7bs3.fsf@ambrevar.xyz> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Pierre Neidhardt Cc: Gabriel Hondet , guix-devel Pierre Neidhardt writes: > Ricardo Wurmus writes: >> I=E2=80=99d prefer not to add a feature like this. > > Why not? Lots of reasons. One reason is that pypi isn=E2=80=99t the only source of Python packages. = Nor is CRAN the only source of R packages. There are also package sources that we fetch from other locations because of problems with whatever has been published on the more popular repositories (e.g. most of the rubygems). I also think it=E2=80=99s not the job of a package manager to tell you how = much software there is in this world and how much of it can be accessed via the package manager. What good are those numbers? What useful information do they provide? I don=E2=80=99t think it=E2=80=99s good to cl= utter the list of commands (and the documentation) with features of very limited usefulness. I don=E2=80=99t like the ways it would work: neither do I want to store and regularly update lists of remote packages nor do I want to have my package manager call out to remote web servers. What about packages that are not available because they are not free software? (Finally, I don=E2=80=99t like the use of the word =E2=80=9Cecosystem=E2=80= =9D in the realm of software.) -- Ricardo