DIP11: Automatic downloading of libraries

[Jonathan M Davis]

On 2011-06-21 11:01, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2011-06-21 19:36, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > On 2011-06-21 10:17, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> >> Maybe I was a bit too harsh saying that std.benchmark maybe wasn't worth
> >> adding. On the other hand isn't this what the review process is about
> >> (or maybe this is before the review process)? We can't include
> >> EVERYTHING in Phobos or it will become like the Java/C# standard
> >> library, I assume we don't want that.
> > 
> > Why not? Granted, we want quality code, and we only have so many people
> > working on Phobos and only so many people to help vet code, but assuming
> > that it can be written at the appropriate level of quality and that the
> > functionality is generally useful, I don't see why we wouldn't want a
> > large standard library like Java and C# have. Given our level of
> > manpower, I don't expect that we'll ever have a standard library that
> > large, but I don't see why having a large standard library would be a
> > bad thing as long as it's of high quality and its functionality is
> > generally useful.
> > 
> > - Jonathan M Davis
> 
> I just got that impression. That we want a relative small standard
> library and have other libraries available as well.

I don't know how everyone else feels about it, but I see no problem with 
having a large standard library as long as it's of high quality and its 
functionality is generally useful. Java and C#'s standard libraries are 
generally considered a valuable asset. One of the major advantages of Python 
which frequently gets touted is its large standard library. I definitely see a 
large standard library as advantageous. The trick is being able to develop it, 
having it of high quality, and actually have everything in it be generally 
useful. We don't have a lot of people working on Phobos, so naturally, it's 
going to be smaller. If quality is a major focus, then the size is going to 
tend to be smaller as well. And if we try and avoid functionality which is 
overly-specific and not generally useful, then that's going to make the 
library smaller as well.

We have been pushing for both high quality and general usefulness in what is 
added to Phobos, so it hasn't exactly been growing by leaps and bounds, and 
with the limited resources that we have, it takes time to improve and enlarge 
it even if we want to be large. So, Phobos is naturally smaller than many 
standard libraries (particularly those backed by large companies) and will 
continue to be so. But I think that having a large, high quality, generally 
useful standard library is very much what we should be striving for, even if 
for now that's pretty much restricted to high quality and generally useful.

Now, maybe there are other folks on the Phobos dev team or on the newsgroup 
which want Phobos to be small, but I really think that experience has shown 
that large standard libraries are generally an asset to a language. The trick 
is ensuring that the functionality that they have is of high quality and 
appropriately general for a standard library.

- Jonathan M Davis