Re: Time to heat up the new module discussion

["Iain *" <iaingnome gmail com>]

On 7/12/06, Darren Kenny <Darren Kenny sun com> wrote:

> I'm concerned about the inclusion of GTK# - and hence all the rest of Mono into
> the core GNOME.

It doesn't pull mono into the core of gnome anymore than having python
applets pulls python in.

> And it worries me that this is opening a door for a slew of C# based
> applications into the core GNOME.

And this is a bad thing because...?

> It makes sense to me that Mono should remain on the out-skirts of GNOME for this
> very reason - core GNOME should only use native languages, and more specifically
> C, as to to do otherwise is likely to effect the already perceived poor
> performance of GNOME.

Python is already used in the deskbar applet which is in core GNOME.

> Just think about what happens when a user logs into a desktop that has Python
> and C# based applets included with C based applets:
> - The panel starts
>   - It starts C/Bonobo based applets - the smallest of which already consumes
>     approx 40Mb of memory.
>   - It starts Python applets - each of these takes up approx 70Mb of memory -
>     and very little of this is shared
>   - It starts a C# based applet - and this pulls in Mono, which I'm sure isn't
>     that small, but I guess at least it does share memory better than Python,
>     but there is still quite a lot of additional memory pulled in.

Then...umm, don't run them?

> I know today people say that memory is cheap, but I think that's not an excuse
> for working on reducing it's consumption.

Limiting memory usage by limiting features is kinda a pyrrhic victory.
"Well, yes, we only have one button on screen, but damn we don't use
any memory"

> Also, there is the small devices like
> the Nokia 770 for which memory consumption is a big factor.

As far as I know, no-one is attempting to run the gnome panel and
python/mono applets on a 770.

> As for .NET, even Microsoft themselves had to pull back from using it for core
> functionality due to performance reasons - why do we think we will do any better?

As someone who is running mono based applications fairly regularly, I
haven't noticed any major performance issues. We're not talking here
about replacing the core libraries with c# based ones, we're talking
about applications, and for me the mono based apps are just as fast as
the C based ones.

iain