[Pkg-crosswire-devel] Fwd: Module packaging, distribution, and management

[Peter von Kaehne]

>>>> It is not data like a game episode (a la Wesnoth).
> 
>>> libsword itself is perfectly usable without one of the modules.
> 
>> Yes.  In the same way, a desktop PC is perfectly usable without a screen
>> or keyboard or mouse (you can use it via the serial port or USB port, or
>> as a headless server across a network.  But very few PCs are used that way!
> 
>>> For example, you could use it for research purposes with modules you
>>> build entirely yourself (and some do use it this way). So, it would
>>> be more reasonable to recommend a Bible for the frontends rather than
>>> the library, in my opinion.

Or you could simply choose to install modules which are never going to
be available in Debian. Including licence reasons. As a Farsi user there
are no PD files for me.

>>> 1. Would it be possible to distribute the lucene indexes as part of
>>> the package? This is an area of potential issues, because if modules
>>> are in write-protected areas then GnomeSword will not be able to
>>> create an index without being run as root. In my opinion, the indexes
>>> are a valid part of the data (for some reason, the official Sword
>>> position does not agree, though I've never heard a good explanation).
> 
>> That sounds almost reasonable to me.  Perhaps better would be for the
>> packages to run a post-install script that builds those indexes, so we
>> aren't transporting the (in some sense redundant, becase it is readily
>> computable from the base modules) index data around on limited bandwidth
>> links etc.  That is very doable, as long as there is a command-line tool
>> which will build them.  We'd package that separately from the libraries
>> (so libs of different versions can coexist, per my other thread), I'd
>> think, and the modules would depend on it so they could be sure it was
>> available for their postinstall script to use.
> 
> The index data is for general books around 100KB, for dictionaries
> around 1MB, and for Bibles between 3MB and 7MB. I don't have a
> preference whether it is distributed or done post-install, but I don't
> think that bandwidth is a huge concern in this case.

I would think that module files growing from 2mb (a complete bible) to
something like 9-10mb is a bandwith concern.

Please also do not forget that jsword and sword use different
implementations for lucene.

I am not aware of the exact details but my understanding is that the
differences are significant.

In consequence, if we ever want to package jsword (and why not since
Java has gone the F/LOSS way?) and Bibledesktop or Kiyut, we would have
to distribute module files with two kind of indeces.

Peter