[maemo-developers] compatibility vs speed and bloat Re: [maemo-developers] gtk+ builtin stock icons removed

[From: Frantisek Dufka]

Eero Tamminen napsal(a):
>>I know this is pretty bold comment from me but if you think 30KB is
>>enough to break compatibility, why not to use uClibc instead of glibc or
>>ipkg packaging system from Familiar instead of full dpkg and .deb?
> 
> 
> Package database and tools don't consume RAM.
> 
Well they take flash space and RAM only when executed. Bigger binary and 
database may also flush file cache that could make the device feel 
slower after installing something.
> 
> uClibc is not binary compatible to Debian.  Glibc and the Maemo Gtk
> are both.  You can for example take Debian ARM strace binary directly
> from debian repo and copy it to the device and it works...

Yes, but is such binary compatibily useful? Do you actually repackage 
anything direcly from debian without any changes? Is recompiling too 
much work? Will the target audience for N770 actually try to install any 
debian package for ARM (like strace or something gtk based) when there 
is even no terminal in production version?

There should be other reason for using glibc, like that it is better and 
not slower or not substantialy bigger or something like this :-) Or 
maybe you cannot compile Opera of Flash player with it. GTK and xfree 
seems to work at least on i386

http://www.emdebian.org/links.html - Erik Andersen's uclibc version of 
Debian
http://people.debian.org/~andersee/uwoody/main/binary-i386/

I know everybody went with glibc (Sharp on Zaurus, Familiar for iPAQs) 
but if performance is priority and everything for the platform has to be 
recompiled anyway, uClibc based system may save more than 30KB of RAM 
per proccess. Or maybe not or there are other problems. I don't know the 
answer, that's why I asked.

Frantisek