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From: hp@vmars.tuwien.ac.at (Peter Holzer)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: <minix/minlib.h> (size of distribution)
Message-ID: <1991May14.170021.13559@email.tuwien.ac.at>
Date: 14 May 91 17:00:21 GMT
References: <53341@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <9914@star.cs.vu.nl>
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ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes:

>Won't fly.  You have no idea how inexpert a lot of the users are.

Oh, yes, I have :-(

[...]
>Requiring these folks to configure everything and
>then run the compiler is asking too much.  It has to work out of the box.

Compared to all the difficulties users have to go through to install
minix now (find the right boot disk, repartition hard disk, etc.) the
additional step of `cd /usr/src; make all' seems rather trivial.
Besides, this step can be included into the script that copies
everything from floppies to hard disks.

If you want to keep disk space to a minimum, distributing the majority
of the programs only as source code and building the binaries at
installation time is IMHO the best idea. The tricky part is to decide
which utilities you need to install the system.

--
|    _  | Peter J. Holzer                       | Think of it   |
| |_|_) | Technical University Vienna           | as evolution  |
| | |   | Dept. for Real-Time Systems           | in action!    |
| __/   | hp@vmars.tuwien.ac.at                 |     Tony Rand |