If we're going to allow for/promote packaging as an easy way to get access to sage, I think we need to reevaluate how we provide optional packages as well. Currently, our optional packages are basically *build time* optional (their inclusion or exclusion can lead to changes how other modules operate, for instance). That means in a packaged environment, they are optional *for the packager*, not for the user.
There are plenty of examples around where optional packages are not of that nature: R has a very lively ecosystem of packages that can be installed *without rebuilding R* and python itself has a good ecosystem like that too. If packaging is going to play a more important role in the distribution of sage, I think we need to make a distinction between build-time optional packages and packages that can be installed after sage has been built. And ideally we'd make as many as possible installable after build. Of course, that opens a whole can of worms of what should happen with post-build packages (that are out-of-tree, possibly?) in the face of updates ... that could put us back in the situation that motivated packaging sage as a monolithic distribution in the first place ... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/3b715679-c3ad-4425-822d-e56b07c6ab9bn%40googlegroups.com.
