Re: [bug-gsrc] No access to source files (firewalled)

[Brandon Invergo]

> Oh, FWIW, I think the tiny tarball without prefetch is still useful.
> Likely more useful.  After all, that's what everyone is using now.
> Requiring people to run out of the dev repo just feels wrong.

I agree.

> Anyway, 1.3gb is still pretty big.  What are the biggest packages?  

Here are the largest 20 packages:

160M    gcompris-12.11.tar.bz2
102M    icecat-17.0.1.tar.gz
102M    gcc-4.7.2.tar.gz
65M     linux-libre-3.7.1-gnu.tar.xz
62M     boost_1_52_0.tar.gz
50M     emacs-24.2.tar.gz
49M     mit-scheme-9.1.1-x86-64.tar.gz
41M     cairo-1.12.8.tar.xz
29M     electric-9.03.jar
28M     gdb-7.5.1.tar.gz
28M     binutils-2.23.1.tar.gz
25M     liquidwar6-0.0.13beta.tar.gz
24M     intlfonts-1.2.1.tar.gz
23M     glibc-2.17.tar.gz
20M     gimp-2.8.2.tar.bz2
19M     gnu-ghostscript-9.05.0.tar.bz2
18M     octave-3.6.3.tar.gz
18M     gcide-0.51.tar.gz
16M     lilypond-2.16.1.tar.gz
15M     gettext-0.18.2.tar.gz

Most of them are GNU, except Boost and Cairo.

> Is that including Perl and Python, etc.?  (Are those the "external
> dependencies")?

I should be more careful with my terms. A true "external" dependency in
GSRC is implemented with a dummy Makefile, which checks if the package
is available on the system (ie looks for a binary, library, etc) and if
it's not, it prints a message saying that the user should install the
package via their package manager. There are also non-GNU dependencies
that are implemented as actual packages to be downloaded and built.

Python is implemented in the former manner, so it is tiny. Boost, for
example, is implemented as the latter. When I took over maintaining
GSRC, only Python was implemented as an external dep. As a result, I
didn't even realize the possibility existed for a long time. Now I'm
implementing all deps in that manner. I'm also toying around with the
idea of moving all non-GNU deps to being external. The fact is that I
have enough trouble making sure all GNU packages are updated on time; I
simply can't keep up with the deps unless I happen to have them
installed via my package manager and I see them updated there.

-brandon