[Bioperl-l] Bio::DB::WebDBSeqI

Kris Boulez krbou@pgsgent.be
Wed, 13 Dec 2000 09:03:47 +0100


Quoting Hilmar Lapp (hlapp@gmx.net):
> 
> A general question to people on the list: what is your general feeling
> about the number of external dependencies? Do you feel fine with a
> growing number, or does it scare you, do you think it might
> significantly heighten the barrier to using the package, or is it just
> normal for you that installing one package means installing another ten.
> Do you think maintaining a collection of the respective external modules
> on the bioperl FTP site mitigates the additional trouble, or are you
> afraid that these most of the time will be outdated?
> 

What I find a problem with CPAN modules is that it is not clear what
these modules in their turn depend on (BioPerl needs module A, A needs
B). It is also sometimes hard to find which module a certain module is
located (finding IO::Scalar in IO-stringy-1.211 is not straightforward).

I do think that we should not depend on external packages like we do now
with 'expat' which is needed for one of the XML modules. There are
companies where only the installation of CPAN modules is allowed.

P.S. I know about CPAN.pm, but had some bad experiences with it :(

Kris,