[zeromq-dev] Governance of language bindings

[Martin Lucina]

sustrik at 250bpm.com said:
> One thing to keep in mind though is the usability of the product. Once 
> we have packages for all major distributions, strict decoupling of 0MQ 
> core and language bindings would be the best solution.
> 
> At the moment though it would make using 0MQ more complex: download the 
> core, build it, download the language binding, build it etc.
> 
> Thus I would rather move to the goal gradually. Haskell binding, as it 
> is still clearly decoupled from 0MQ core makes a perfect candidate to 
> start with. Later on we can decouple Common List binding which is glued 
> to 0MQ core in somehow forceful fashion. Still later on we can decouple 
> Ruby, then Python etc.

Agreed, this needs to be done gradually. However, I'd be wary of shipping
the core separately from *ANY* language bindings as you propose. I realise
this appeals to your academic sense of clean separation but IMO it'd be
horrible from a usability point of view.

By definition, if you've downloaded the 0mq core package you already have C
and C++ installed. Therefore at least these two bindings should be built
and installed *by default*.

This allows newcomers to just download the package, run "./configure && make
&& make install" and get a working system. With the current behaviour
people have to explicitly find the relevant documentation that tells them
to add "--with-c --with-cpp" to the options to configure.

-mato