[Freeciv-Dev] Re: freeciv is big ...

[Martin Hinsch <martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2001 at 12:02:40PM +0200, Karl-Ingo Friese wrote:
> 
> ... and this is meant literaly. The current CVS tardist takes
> more then 5 MB to download (and seriousely more when uncompressed).
> And even since we all know that HD space is cheap and the modems
> get faster each months, this still looks quite big.
> 
> Even if HD space gets cheaper each day; there is still a problem
> left that affects many freeciv users: quota.
> Out of curiousity I looked a little into this:
> 
> 282   ./doc
> 353   ./ai
> 4053  ./client
> 1028  ./common
> 6865  ./data
> 1368  ./server
> 6704  ./po
> 
> Obviousely the translations as well as the data directory contain the
> most space. A short look in data reveals
> 
> 1302  ./engels
> 233   ./scenario
> 615   ./misc
> 151   ./civ1
> 170   ./default
> 640   ./trident
> 3172  ./hires
> 151   ./civ2
> 149   ./nation
> 
> So the big killers here are the .xpm directories, especialy the hires.
> But even engels is not that small.
> 
> Two ideas:
> 
> a) Leave the engels tileset out of the main distribution. Maybe I am wrong
>    but I do not think that a significant percentage of the freeciv'lers
>    is using it anymore (personal opinion).
> b) Convert them to pngs.
>    Advantage: png compresseses image data about 30% smaller then gzip.
>               Plus: The installed version is smaller as well (right now
>               the freeciv data dir contains the .xpms after decompressing
>    Disadvtange: pngs require an additional library. xpms are more easy to
>               maintain
> 
> Just my few coppers,
> Ingo
> 
> -- 
> 
> Karl-Ingo Friese
> kif@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 

Why not just separate code and data (like e.g. wmaker does)? In this way you
could download small code packages very often (daily cvs) and the data only
when it changes, which as far as I have seen up to now is not very often.

regards
Martin

-- 

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