[Nix-dev] Separating Free/non-free package

[Marc Weber]

Hi Ludo.

Excerpts from ludo's message of Sat Sep 19 15:52:38 +0200 2009:
> I’m considering splitting ‘all-packages.nix’ in 3 files such that:
>   gnu-packages.nix ⊆ free-packages.nix ⊆ all-packages.nix

No! Read on - My impression is:
- huge effort which benefts? (I don't see them)

- there are alternatives. Eg you could sort packages by
  1) freeness - you proposed this
  2) small memory footprint (so this is equal to "no java!" :-)
  3) cross-platform (runs on linux & windows)
  4) linux only
  5) ...

- some drawbacks: History is harder to read (svn blame etc)
  branches will have to be updated - much work which value?

- You don't reach your goals because there are some sub-universes such
  as haskell/ruby/python/perl/java/xorg which have huge attr sets in
  other files. Do you want to split them as well ?

We had such an idea before. The idea was about rewriting all-packags so
that packages match the categories used in gentoo. Look it up in the
archives.

I'm not quite sure what you were missing while thinking about this
proposal? Can you clarify this a bit?

Eg I appreciate you working on labeling packages by their freeness
property.

So what's your real goal?

I could think about:

  - seeing whether a package is free instantly?

  - disallowing non free packages

I'd like to see whether there are other ways to get what you're keen on
first.

So I'd like you to think about whether this change will really generate
the value you think it does. It causes work and no value to me.

Right now we have 1400 import lines in all-packages.nix. (this is a
rough estimate telling you about the amount of work required to finish
this project.. not thinking about stdenv-updates)

So I'd appreciate seeing some more strong reasons illustrating the
benefits of this change.

Yours
Marc Weber