Re: Bug#287839: ITP: mxml -- small XML parsing library

["Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@debian.org>]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2004 at 10:58:08PM +0000, Roger Leigh wrote:

 > >  >     Mini-XML is a small XML parsing library that you can use to
 > >  >     read XML and XML-like data files in your application without
 > >  >     requiring large non-standard libraries.  Mini-XML only
 > >  >     requires an ANSI C compatible compiler (GCC works, as do
 > >  >     most vendors' ANSI C compilers) and a "make" program.
 > >
 > mxml is intended to be minimal, as a counter to libxml2 bloat (and it
 > *is* a bloated monster).
 > 
 > It was deliberately designed to implement *only* the libxml2 tree
 > interface.  Its first use was in libgimpprint to remove our libxml2
 > dependency, and provide us with an fast, lightweight, embeddable XML
 > parser.

 You mean for loading files which look like XML.

 But that's irrelevant.  My point was only that the description that I'm
 quoting above is neither helpful nor fair.

 After reading your post I wonder if "without requiring large
 non-standard libraries" actually was meant to be read as "without
 requiring libxml2" (i.e. the "large non-standard library" meant here is
 libxml2).

 > I'm very happy with it.  It might not be "fully-featured", but it
 > does everything most people use libxml2 for, and in just 12 KiB
 > compared with the 1 MiB monster that is libxml2!!
 > 
 > I would suggest to the OP that you provide a static version, since
 > many of us do use it linked statically.

 That's so sweet... first you complain about libxml2 being large (which
 is true, having an HTTP client and all that embedded in it) and then
 you go on and say that you embed the little one statically in other
 components.  Just for kicks:

 $ find /usr/bin -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -n1 readelf -d 2> /dev/null |
   grep NEEDED | grep libxml2.so | wc -l
 145

 So that's 145 binaries which might end up sharing 1 MB worth of pages
 on the system.  Imagine all those embedding mini-XML ... 145*12 :-)

 Again: I'm just complaining about the lack of a helpful and fair
 description.  I don't care about either library (even if I'd prefer
 everything to use libxml2, so the applications I use can actually
 *share* the dammed bloat!)

 Marcelo