[Koha-devel] [Koha-patches] [PATCH] Bug 2176: adding SMS::Send to list of dependencies

[MJ Ray]

"Joe Atzberger" <ohiocore at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 1:10 PM, MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
> > Requiring modules that we're not actually going to use is also a bug
> > in Koha.
>
> I think that misconstrues the situation somewhat.  We don't know what the
> end user is going to use.  We have certain requirements to provide certain
> capabilities. It is not inherently wrong for the default installation to be
> "maximum capability", even if (for example) one given user never prints
> barcodes, and another never authenticates to LDAP.

Maybe not inherently wrong, but it is poor marketing, isn't it?

If your certain requirements were documented, so others can decide if
they share them - and ignore them if not - it wouldn't be so bad.

> If the dependency is a reliable, widely compatible perl module, it should be
> treated as a Koha dependency, even if the feature it supports is logically
> severable.  That is to say, we don't need to break Koha into 100 bits with
> frequently overlapping but "optional" dependencies.  Each optional fragment
> should exist only because its dependencies are problematic or impossible for
> users to install correctly.  Like Schedule::At not working on Win32 (no "at"
> command) makes it optional.

I think that's taking things to the wrong extreme.  No need to break
into a hundred parts, but expensive, awkward and/or niche things are
probably worth being options - LDAP, image processing, cellphones...

> Specifically, I don't think the "cost" in HDD space is significant given the
> profile of the project right now. I don't think it is worthwhile to add any
> complexity where the main payoff is allowing the user to *potentially* get a
> 400KB smaller installation.  I can imagine that things would be different if
> we were working on an embedded application, or bundling larger deps like
> mysql and postgress.

I don't really understand this comment: the koha-en files take about
25Mb at present.  By contrast, Image::Magick and its core libraries
add 4.5Mb, without including the various bits of X which probably
won't be installed on headless webservers otherwise.  That's a
significant 20% more.

But disk space isn't my main concern: each extra dependency is a
chance to cause problems for some users, to lose koha some testers.

> I still support developing a better way of accounting for the optional
> dependencies we do have, or migrating them to the kind of perl dependency
> that is unobjectionable.

What way would you suggest?

Thanks,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
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