Hi David, On 2012-11-27, David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > I feel the way to solve this is to have community contributed > packages, which don't form part of the core of Sage, but can be > installed by anyone if they wish to. Projects like R, Perl, autoconf > all have this.
What is wrong with Sage's experimental or optional packages? Or (analogously) with the packages of GAP, that also come with different degrees of "official" support/approval. OK, Sage does not have *that* many experimental/optional packages. Later in your post, you stated (if I understand you correctly) that it may be a step forward to *not* just add new stuff to the sage library, hence, *not* to add it to the default distribution, and instead create a new spkg for new stuff. I am not sure whether I agree that it would be a step forward. On the plus side: * It would provide more flexibility for the user, when he/she can add stuff needed for a particular application. * The packages are (I think) supposed to be largely independent. Hence, it would force the developper to modularise the code, which may improve code quality (but IANASE [I am not a software engineer]). On the minus side: * If people get the new stuff without the need to install an additional package, they are more likely to discover and use it. Hence, new stuff would more likely to be tested (good for quality). * Imagine that stuff like integer programming would not be in the sage library, but only available as an optional package. Then, there will quite likely be users saying: "Sage does not even have integer programming", being unaware that all what they need to do is install yet another optional package. * If code is distributed in many small packages contributed by individuals, it would mean that the version control would be fragmented. That's totally opposed to the "single repository" approach that seems to be part of Sage's switch to git. Best regards, Simon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
