> From: Mark H Weaver <m...@netris.org> > What is the advantage of including our own little read-only filesystem, > when every OS already provides this functionality? Is it really > significantly easier to install 3 files than to install 300? > > Admittedly, I can see how it might make a psychological difference. > Somehow, people get the feeling that a package is huge and bloated when > it contains a large directory structure, whereas a single file of the > same size (or even larger) seems significantly less obtrusive. > > However, I'm not sure that this psychological difference is enough to > justify the reduced flexibility of such an approach. > > Is there an advantage that's not merely psychological?
No, there is no advantage beyond the psychological for any system that uses the standard Unix-like filesystem hierarchy and has a decent package manager. There are some theoretical corner cases where it could be useful. Don't know if these would ever occur in practice. - Systems that don't use a Unix-like filesystem heirarchy - Programs that are distributed in a folder whose root location can change - Programs that use Guile as an extension but want to limit its library for some reason. It is all branding, or marketing, I guess. And fun, of course. I thought that, as a hack, it would be fun to try. Regards, Mike
