On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:11 PM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > +1 to Robert's comments. I can't tell you how many people just in the > last few days have told me that they use (and work on!) Sage *only* > because when they try to build it on their computer it "just worked".
Do people tell you when they just skip sage because of the massive download and prospect of compiling it? Download 600Mb binary? That's 20% of the monthly allowance for some common adsl plans around here (and I think we have one of the higher levels of internet penetration in latin-america, if not the highest). Getting mathematica is almost cheaper here. Note that I *love* the fact that most of the time I can type "make" and it just works. Thumbs up for that!!! > If it hadn't, they definitely wouldn't be involved with Sage now. > Removing bzip, zlib, readline, mercurial, etc. is simply going to > greatly reduce the chances for such people. > > I see my goal with the Sage project as *not* to compete with Pari or > Singular or Macaulay2 or to try to get users that would otherwise use > those systems. My goal is that Sage can compete with programs such > as Mathematica which are self-contained and easy to install on many > platforms. I want to make Sage something that appeals to users who > do not currently use systems like Pari, Singular, etc., because they > find installation and usability of those systems too icky. I think "apt-get install pari-gp" is the trivialest thing... I haven't compiled pari for eons. Especially because when software matures, it won't affect me as much to not have the bleeding edge release. And hey, compiling pari *also* just worked most of the time. It's not only about being easy to build --- it's also about convincing people it's easy to build, despite the scary looking size of the tarball, and moreover covincing people it's easy to develop, and worth giving code back to the commons!!! Another two thumbs up for that (and metcalfe's law). > http://sagenb.org (and the notebook in general) is a little first step More like a big leap, IMO. > in that direction, but there are many other steps. Make building Sage > from source more difficult isn't a good step though. You are jumping to conclusions. Nobody wants to make building sage from source more difficult. Move back two spaces and read again. It was really meant to be constructive. Best, Gonzalo -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
