[OpenLayers-Dev] ship only with minimal build for 2.12

[Andreas Hocevar]

Hey Tom,

you're right, the documentation needs to be improved to explain the
modularity of the library better. What we really want in the end (you and I have
discussed this already) is make OpenLayers work better with common
dependency management tools that people work with.

After that, there will still be people that don't use dependency
management tools at all, and I think these people shouldn't be
bothered with missing components - especially if they come from GMaps
/ Leaflet *because* of functionality that's not available there.

Andreas.

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 7:26 PM, Tom MacWright <tom at macwright.org> wrote:
> (resending, forgot to reply all)
>
> That's a larger problem: OpenLayers, the website, and the docs, doesn't talk
> about its modularity and what you do when when you don't have a component,
> or how you check to see if you have a component. That docs issue needs to be
> fixed, not avoided.
>
> Enough with the filesize comparisons to WMS tiles or whatever; OpenLayers is
> a behemoth compared to other Javascript libraries - it's several times the
> size of jQuery, Backbone, Leaflet, and whatever else users have tried out,
> and for reasons that totally don't matter to 90% of users. OpenLayers is
> 177kb gzipped - that's 6x jQuery.
>
> On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 1:00 PM, Andreas Hocevar <ahocevar at opengeo.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> I can already smell the questions on the mailing list and elsewhere
>> from people finding something not working when they go beyond the
>> "light" use case...
>>
>> Still -1. What's so bad about a cacheable script of less than 1MB
>> gzipped, compared to a single non cacheable set of WMS tiles for a
>> fullscreen map with several MB?
>>
>> Andreas.
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 6:48 PM, Tom MacWright <tom at macwright.org> wrote:
>> > There's no need for the current light build to be the one that ships:
>> > it'd
>> > be simple to expand and specialize it a bit more to align with what's
>> > needed
>> > by the Leaflet/Google Maps usecase.
>> >
>> > Tom
>> >
>> > On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 12:46 PM, Andreas Hocevar <ahocevar at opengeo.org>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> The light build with the current lite configuration would be useless
>> >> for most users. As Tom says, many people won't be able to use the
>> >> python based build tool, and what then happens is much worse than
>> >> people using a full build: they'll be using the debug loader or the
>> >> hosted version from openlayers.org.
>> >>
>> >> So I'm -1 on shipping a light build.
>> >>
>> >> Andreas.
>> >>
>> >> On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 5:11 PM, Tom MacWright <tom at macwright.org>
>> >> wrote:
>> >> > Absolutely. If OpenLayers doesn't provide a jQuery-UI like build
>> >> > creator
>> >> > (something that I tried to do with OpenLayerer, but that build-tool
>> >> > refactoring was never accepted), then there should be a light build
>> >> > distributed by default. The expectations of the user to run the
>> >> > Python
>> >> > scripts are way too great for the use-case of just downloading and
>> >> > running
>> >> > the thing, even if they seems simple for developers. Like, some guy
>> >> > making
>> >> > an HTML website on a Windows machine would have to install Python
>> >> > from
>> >> > scratch: it isn't going to happen.
>> >> >
>> >> > Tom
>> >> >
>> >> > On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Bart van den Eijnden
>> >> > <bartvde at opengeo.org>
>> >> > wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> As suggested by Antoine on Twitter, and I agree. Clearly a lot of
>> >> >> people
>> >> >> are still using a full build, even if we tell people not to.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> So what about only shipping a minimal build for 2.12?
>> >> >>
>> >> >> https://twitter.com/#!/bartvdeijnden/status/172328188704333825
>> >> >> https://twitter.com/#!/brankgnol/status/172345191670358016
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Best regards,
>> >> >> Bart
>> >> >>
>> >> >> --
>> >> >> Bart van den Eijnden
>> >> >> OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
>> >> >> Expert service straight from the developers.
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> >> Dev mailing list
>> >> >> Dev at lists.osgeo.org
>> >> >> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/openlayers-dev
>> >> >>
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > _______________________________________________
>> >> > Dev mailing list
>> >> > Dev at lists.osgeo.org
>> >> > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/openlayers-dev
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Andreas Hocevar
>> >> OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org/
>> >> Expert service straight from the developers.
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Andreas Hocevar
>> OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org/
>> Expert service straight from the developers.
>
>



-- 
Andreas Hocevar
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org/
Expert service straight from the developers.