[m-dev.] for review: add readline support to mdb

[Thomas Charles Conway]

On Wed, Mar 24, 1999 at 03:46:02PM EST, Fergus Henderson wrote:
> On 22-Mar-1999, Tyson Dowd <trd at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> > On 22-Mar-1999, Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> > > Estimated hours taken: 10
> > > 
> > > Add GNU readline support to the debugger.
> > 
> > Just one question first -- why include readline in the source distribution?
> 
> Well, the idea is to make it easier for the user to install things,
> since they only need to install one package, rather than having to install
> two. 
> 
> It does increase the size of the source distribution a bit
> (by about 600k compressed), but that seems like a worthwhile
> price to pay for ease of installation, I think... no?
> 

For users who want to install Mercury as an rpm or a deb, then
there is no point since the package system takes care of things.

My experience of building lots of packages of one sort or another
on hydra is that as long as the README has a pointer to where I can
get the needed other packages, then there isn't too much fuss.

OTOH, the Mercury dist is already pretty big, and it would be nice to
avoid making it even bigger. It's a perception thing - Mercury being
600K smaller, but needing to install libreadline suggests that the
extra 600K *isn't our fault*. :-)

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Conway <conway at cs.mu.oz.au> )O+
To a killer whale, otters are like hairy popcorn -- Paul Dayton