I don't believe that anyone's suggested moving anything into their own CVS repositories, at least not right away. And I think you're missing the point. There won't be a separately distributed "modules" package. It's only a matter of how many modules are included with the pike you download.
Thought needs to be given to the fact that you (I don't presume to include myself in this group, yet :)) are all a very special class of Pike users. As someone has already pointed out, you write the code because you have a particular need for it. Certainly then, the 10 or 15 users that have contributed all of the code will find their contributions indispensable. However, the non-developer users have told us repeatedly, that they could care less about some of these modules. Why should we (I include myself here because I've added bloat to the modules myself in the past) be so self absorbed to think that they really do want these things even though they'll never use them? There are users who'd like to use pike in embedded applications. They don't need (and don't have room for) all of the modules that ordinary users have use for. We could take proactive steps to make life easier for them by giving them a download that's "pre-neutered" rather than forcing them to figure out which modules are absolutely necessary.
Along a similar line, my bet is that a general user will probably not have a use for (aside from the pike-required modules like Gmp and Crypto) much beyond database access, XML parsing and maybe the Image module and GTK. That's more than a lot of other languages bundle, and I if a user really wants to write their own BitTorrent client, or work with their Satellite video, they can use monger to add that functionality in about 20 seconds.
As to the "pike users expect all this stuff", I would respond by saying that if they're smart enough to use DVB and GL and all that other stuff, they're certainly capable of reading the download page for 7.8 to see that they'll have to either download -full or use monger to install those things they need.
As to the module maintenance sorts of issues, I think they're completely managable, even without a designated maintainer. Even before that, the "first step" should be to make modules available separately outside of the Pike distribution, as well as through Monger. This will also provide a solution to the currently clumsy solution to recompiling a module when it doesn't catch your libraries (the mysql glue comes to mind here). Similarly, we should be able to start making -core distributions without too much heartache right away.
Making life easier for users will enhance the image, usability and user population of Pike. I realize that's not something some here care about (which is fine,) but for those that do, we should be doing everything reasonable to satisfy users.
Bill
On Mon, 2 May 2005, Per Hedbor () @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:
The fact that more or less _everyone_ that installs xemacs installs the sumo package too should tell us something about how useful separately distributes modules are, though....