Pkg3: "Binary" or "non-source" packages

[tknopp]

Taken from JuliaLang/julia#16330:

It would be nice if it would be possible to have packages where the functionality is only available in precompiled form.

[tknopp]

Since this requires infrastructure within Julia Base/Core this does not necessary need to be implemented for the first Pkg3 release but it would be good if this feature could be kept in mind.

[samo-lin]

Are there any news on this issue? This feature would be most useful to avoid file system congestion when running a julia application at large scale (on thousands of nodes) - a Julia discourse topic.

[StefanKarpinski]

Not really. It requires non-trivial compiler work and hasn't been a top priority for the compiler team.

[nico202]

@tknopp

It would be nice

Nice to whom? It mean shipping non-free software. It's not nice not to have the source code. Please don't

[tknopp]

Yes, but still it would be nice if Pkg would not be restricted to open source packages. If one wants companies to adopt Julia, the possibility of distributing an obfuscated package should be given. You don't need to use that package but closed source software is to evil by definition.

[nico202]

If companies want to adopt julia, they need to release the source code. That's the deal. This is what we should promote

[tknopp]

That might be your personal opinion (I don't know who you refer to "we") but that is certainly not common sense across Julia developers. Julia itself is not licensed under GPL for a reason, its released under MIT, which allows for using the code in a closed source product. Most packages are also released under MIT license.

[nico202]

Yeah, I usually state my opinions, non somebody else's. Including Julia in a proprietary program is one thing. Allowing julia to download proprietary programs is another.

[andyferris]

Allowing julia to download proprietary programs is another.

I mean... users can already just wrap a compiled library with ccall... there's no reason we wouldn't accept a wrapper library in General that wrapped closed-source (but distributable) code. I just found an old library for DirectX, but I'm sure there are better examples. Whether that compiled code was originally Julia code or not should be immaterial.