[Mono-devel-list] Splitting up Mono packages.

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello,

> What's wrong with Runtime vs SDK separation as it is done in .NET ?
> 
> Why do you want to isolate DirectoryServices, Drawing, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, SWF
> and Remoting?
> Is this related to the patent issues ? Unless there are legal problems, I
> wouldn't split mono at all.
> 
> The great thing about .NET is that you don't have to worry about
> dependencies or system differences. You just assume that all the core stuff
> needed to run your app is there ready to use.

There are various ideas at play here.  The first one is that Mono today
implements two separate stacks:

	http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/tmp/two-stacks.png

For instance, the desktop app developers do not really need the ASP.NET
stack installed in their machines;  And the same goes for those doing
web sites: they do not really need to pull in Gtk#, Gtk and Wine to have
a fully functional system.

Today we have kind of a "soft" dependency in other packages, and things
only work if you have installed them before to avoid making Mono a huge
download.

By splitting things up, we can actually get the proper dependencies in
place, and let people choose what they want and need.

We will likely have a `meta' package mono that will basically pull every
dependency.