[Pkg-javascript-devel] Small Node.js packages in NEW

[Thorsten Alteholz]

Hi Bas,

Debian is running on lots of different types of computers ranging from 
high end number crunchers to low end Raspberry PIs or embedded devices.
While installing/updating a package all of them have to download the 
complete package information and parse it over and over again. This is not 
a problem for high end computers with good network connectivity, but low 
end computers might have a problem.
As we have seen in the past there are memory constraints or the whole 
process just consumes too much time. I admit that there is lots of room 
for improvement in Debians package handling, but at the moment we just 
have what we have.

Looking at the popcon statistic of nodejs, the numbers are growing but 
compared with the numbers of dpkg, they are still rather low.
So I would say the overhead of those nodejs users that need to install 
a few kB of superfluous code is not as bad as the resource consumption of 
all other users.

I don't have a better solution for small packages, but as long as there is 
no improvement in package handling, I think there should be no exception. 
I would still prefer the bundling of several small packages into bigger 
chunks. Isn't git able to handle several upstreams in one repository?

   Thorsten