I don't mind the debian way of packaging, btw, it's quite usuful. What I dread is that, say, Protocols.HTTP will be removed (and not nessesarily that specific module, perhaps Calendar instead) from the default distribution, and suddenly most 'cool' small pike-hacks that can be downloaded will also require a secondary download of pike-modules, just as is already the case for perl and python.
Believe me, I hate having to download 10 perl modules just to get anything done. I'm not suggesting that we should gut the module tree by default. Rather, I'm suggesting that perhaps we need to clean house a little bit.
It really raises the bar for 'normal' users as far as running pike-scripts is concerned.
What about an enhancement to the resolver that would ease identifying and fetching missing modules:
pike --module_check myapp.pike
You seem to be missing the following modules:
Foo.bar Gazonk.client
Would you like to try to locate them?
...
And actually, one of the top-ten widely distributed pike-applications I know of (AIDO) requires SDL, GL, MySQL, HTTP and much more.
I have trouble buying that argument. Besides, is it so hard to add "pike -x monger" commands to your installation script? I get that you're convinced that everyone needs SDL and GL. I'm not. Perhaps we can just move on?
Bill