Re: A proposal for Midnight Commander

[rgr sdf lonestar org (Rob Ristroph)]

>>>>> "Ali" == Ali Akcaagac <aliakc web de> writes:
Ali> 
>> I like the current mc, and I think it is going in the right
>> direction in general.
Ali> 
Ali> Yes if you speak about cleaning it up, removing dead code,
Ali> replace broken parts with new ones. Then I fullheartly agree
Ali> here. But what benefits do we have if we can't really pariticpate
Ali> to this project ?  There is a bugreporting system, a mailinglist,
Ali> but basically proposals we raise are going to /dev/null.

Are patches being rejected ?  One way to get a new feature accepted
would be to post the patch or whole source on the web, even if the
maintainer didn't like it at first, widespread use of the changes
might change minds.

>> It looks interesting. In the cursory inspection I just gave it, I
>> was only able to compile it in the --with-included-slang
>> configuration. Compiling with -Os and stripping, with options as
>> close to what I used in mc 4.6 as possible, I get an executable of
>> 4.51 MB, while my mc 4.6 executable is 3.98 MB. I fiddled with the
>> config options and recompiled it three times. Basically, it
>> reminds me of mc 4.1 which would not allow me to turn off enough
>> options to fit it on a floppy system.
Ali> 
Ali> ;------------ w/o gpm, undelext2 + stripped
Ali> galaxy ulixys:~ > ls -l /tmp/s/mc-4.1.40-pre8/src/mc
Ali> 651856 Nov 14 20:39 /tmp/s/mc-4.1.40-pre8/src/mc
Ali> ;------------
Ali> 
Ali> whereas my 4.6.0 version
Ali> 
Ali> ;------------ normal configure && make && make install
Ali> galaxy ulixys:~ > ls -l /usr/local/bin/mc
Ali> 670013 Nov 12 01:15 /usr/local/bin/mc
Ali> ;------------
Ali> 
Ali> I must admit the differences aren't that big for a more improved
Ali> version like the 4.6.0. That's definately not my worries
Ali> either. I am only stuck with the problematic of the glib
Ali> dependency.

Your 4.1.40 is likely unstripped, because it doesn't strip the copy in
the source tree (in fact make install doesn't strip it either).  It is
likely stripping will save you more space than glib.  Also look at
"ldd /tmp/s/mc-4.1.40-pre8/src/mc" and "ldd /usr/local/bin/mc".  It is
likely that you link in one or two unneeded libraries.

Here's what I am getting from ldd:

libglib-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0 (0x40024000)
libncurses.so.5 => /lib/libncurses.so.5 (0x40048000)
libext2fs.so.2 => /lib/libext2fs.so.2 (0x40088000)
libcom_err.so.2 => /lib/libcom_err.so.2 (0x4009c000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4009e000)
libgpm.so.1 => /lib/libgpm.so.1 (0x401c1000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

And even then I can remove libgpm if I need to.

Ali> Maybe it's possible to hook on at the 4.1.40 development of mcMP
Ali> after all the maintainer made some cleanups by removing stuff no
Ali> one really wants in mc, as written the GNOME stuff, TK, X. There
Ali> is a lot of room to improve (even in size). I don't really
Ali> know. On the one hand I like to follow mainstream, I do like
Ali> mc460 but the glib issue gave me many more times problems than
Ali> just one time.
Ali> 
Ali> I will continue keeping an eye on both projects.

Ok, but consider which is easier -- dealing with the separate 4.1.40
tree, or just adding --without-x to your configure flags ?

--Rob