Re: [Jsynthlib-devel] Separating the synth drivers from JSL (Was: Name for refactored branch)

[Joe E. <jo...@em...>]

On 9/3/2011 2:16 AM, William Zwicky wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 6:55 PM, Joe Emenaker<jo...@em...>  wrote:
>> Well, it seems a little silly to me that we would need to make a new
>> release number any time someone makes a new driver.
> Really?  It's seems silly to me to make the user rummage around either
> SourceForge or a custom GUI for what amounts to a tiny download, and then
> they need to do this repeatedly if they have several synths.  With an
> integrated download, they get the latest core, and ALL the latest synths at
> once.

Well, that's a fair concern. I don't necessarily think we should release 
the core *without* any drivers. I just think we should be able to 
release new drivers without having to do another release. I'm thinking 
kind of how MIDI Quest does it, where a large part of the driver set is 
included, but they're always adding more to the website.

Also, they don't necessarily have to go rummaging, either. With the MIDI 
inquiry feature, we could have JSL query a synth, get an ID string back, 
and then magically grab that over the net for the user.

>> Also, I just looked at the disk usage for my latest checkout of trunk,
>> and the "core" package takes about 1MB while "synthdrivers" takes almost
>> 6MB. So, most of the space and compile-time is going into the
>> synthdrivers, and most users only need one or two of those. Just seems
>> like a lot of waste.
>>
> Well then it's time to upgrade your 486.  6MB is not worth worrying about,
> even on an SSD.  User time is more precious than disk space.

Well, I was using the space as quantifiable evidence that the codebase 
is so heavily skewed toward synthdrivers... by a factor of about 6:1. 
So, svn checkouts take 7x as long, making an archive of the code takes 
7x as long... etc. Every time I zip, unzip, or checkout a copy of the 
code, "core" goes by pretty fast, and then I get to watch this endless 
string of synths where I'm thinking "Wow... look at all of these synths 
that I've never owned, never *will* own, and don't even know what they 
look like...  good thing I've got drivers for 'em...". And this 
lopsidedness is just going to get more-lopsided.

Also, it just irks me that we have to generate a synthdrivers.properties 
file any time a driver is added. The ".properties" system is just so... 
yucky. JSL should be able to quickly and dynamically find all of its 
drivers by itself.

- Joe