Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
> I hate to ruin a nice juicy flamewar by introducing such dull things
> as facts into it, but...
....
> 4,971,072 Python 1.5.2
> 16,290,796 Perl-5.00503
Errr, if we are talking about facts and numbers then let's better
have a closer look ("there are lies, damned lies and statistics").
From my Red Hat installation on Alpha (few bytes one way, few another,
a processor type does not make that much of a difference) 'rpm -qi ...'
for Python gives:
Name : python
Version : 1.5.2 Vendor: Red Hat Software
Release : 7 Build Date: .....
Install date: Mon Apr 10 14:48:25 2000 ...
Group : Development/Languages Source RPM: python-1.5.2-7.src.rpm
Size : 12118558
and for Perl
Name : perl
Version : 5.00503 Vendor: Red Hat Software
Release : 6 Build Date: ....
Install date: Mon Apr 10 14:48:13 2000 .....
Group : Development/Languages Source RPM: perl-5.00503-6.src.rpm
Size : 21494750
so the difference in size is substantial. Right? Well, no, not exactly
as a closer look reveals that well over 9 MB of a Perl package consists
of automatically generated '.ph' files which are 95% pure undiluted
garbage, there are not really used by anything in a modern Perl,
documentation says explicitely not to do it, standard Perl installation
process does not even attempt to create these, but Red Hat is "user
friendly". Oh, well...
We can also see in a Python package description:
"Note that documentation for Python is provided in the python-docs
package."
Ooops! Perl has something between 3.5 and 4 Megs of manual pages and
pod files in /usr/lib/perl5 directory not counting all that stuff
which is /usr/man (none of docs is charged to these 12118558 bytes
of Python).
> Now let's get back to the *real* problems, shall we?
I fully agree with that but let's not muddy waters with irrelevant
and incomparable numbers which only pretend that they mean anything.
Michal
michal@harddata.com
p.s. I had good reasons in older stuff installed by Hard Data to replace
Perl package from Red Hat with what I prepared and recompiled myself.
In this, quite deliberately, I did _not_ include any of those .ph files
and I never heard from any of customers to complain about that. So most
likely '95%' of these extra 9 MB+ above is a gross understimate but
maybe some of it can be really used __somewhere__ with some legacy
scripts from Perl4 (most of that is a useless junk in any
circumstances).
-
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