[arch-general] Another rant on arch way abuse and false promises

[Ng Oon-Ee]

On Wed, 2009-12-02 at 10:11 +0100, Arvid Picciani wrote:
> 
> Let me quote "the arch way 2.0"  which has a very nice condensed 
> statement that does in fact support minimalism:
> 
> "
> without unnecessary additions, modifications, or complications
> 
> Simplicity is the primary principle. All other principles must be 
> sacrificed in favor of design simplicity. Implementation simplicity is 
> more important than interface simplicity.
> "
> 
> Please provide an interpretaton of this statement that does support 
> enabling features for the sake of interface simplicity, breaking design 
> simplicity in the process.

Design simplicity? How is --enable-dbus less simple than --disable-dbus
or the equivalents?

Simplicity isn't a hammer with which to attack every package that
doesn't conform to minimalism by your definition. Are you suggesting the
removal of KDE/Gnome from the repos? Because to disable dbus would
require:-
a) Parallel packages be maintained with dbus enabled for usage of gnome
and the like packages
OR
b) Gnome and the like will have to be moved to AUR/community since they
would need recompiling some core packages for dbus support.

Neither of the options seems much like design simplicity to me. It would
be good if the UNIX way (tm) or the Arch Way (tm) is not treated as some
kind of religious doctrine. Systems evolve and grow, and the desktop
does as well, thankfully.