a little DrakX history:

june 1999: 
  i start rewriting redhat's install in perl, partly for the fun of it. I'm
  still working for the army

5 july 1999: 
  i start full time job at mandrakesoft. But we don't have many computers and i
  must share the accounting computer with Merieme who is working half-time. No
  test machine (i test on others box, and destroyed Jacques partitions once),
  guess how it slows things down?

august 1999: 
  at last computers, even test one
  first DrakX version which can install things, very very rough

september 1999: 
  a friend of mine help me 2 weeks on DrakX relayed by Francois

november 1999:
  first released version of DrakX (goldpack). Not really stable yet.

january 2000:
  7.0 is out, with a DrakX quite stable

july 2000: 
  dams starts working on draknet

mid-october -> mid-january 2000: 
  gc rewrites the stage1 to win every kb we can 
  -> size divided by 7 (!) for cdrom


The DrakX team is also doing a lot of other things:
- drakxtools
- urpmi, early MandrakeUpdate, early rpmdrake...
- Mandrake Control Center (new DrakConf)
- packages maintenance/enhancing (esp. ghostscript, 3D-wrappers, lilo)
- fixing core packages to make them installable
- scoring packages, sorting them, flagging them... (compssList, rpmsrate)
- reading/answering cooker and other MLs
- helping non-perl gurus :)

That doesn't give much. Me being the one more working on plain DrakX. It gives 2
people working for 1.5 years. IMO it isn't ``spending an enormous amount of
resources''.
And what do you mean by ``compared to the code base size''??? DrakX is currently
around 28K lines, which is big IMO. You can compare it with linuxconf which is
170K lines. I think the achievement of DrakX is comparable (a 6 times code size
win from dumb C++ to expressive perl is normal imo).


Also it seems like we don't have the same understanding of the word
"maintenance".
DrakX functionalities have evolved *a lot* since the beginning:

- hardware detection, configuration, debugging, work-arounding (multi-kernel installs...)
- making things prettier
  - more bitmaps
  - "advanced" button
  - syslinux graphical boot
- making it work with latest versions of software (eg: switching to rpm4)
- finding out the best way to use rpmlib
- multi-cd
- draknet: configuring every piece of stupid protocols
- diskdrake: raid, loopback, LVM, resizing, checking stupid users entry
- XFdrake: multi-mice, multi-heads, 3D-accel
- porting to axp/sparc/ppc (with Stew's help)
- always more i18n
- keeping things small
  - .cz format
  - moving to .png
  - getFile on demand from mdkinst for ramdisk installs

[...]

> You don't believe the books ? Count yourself; see the man/months spent
> in 'pure' developoment in drakX, and the resources put in mantainance
> of the code base; as far as i know, your count should confirm what the
> books says; more probabily, you will discover that our numbers are
> even worse.

if you count enhancements, adding features... in maintenance, i confirm the
numbers, and find them quite normal.

if you only count bug fixing, the time would be much shorter (around 30%).

ption value='topic/gi-ppc'>topic/gi-ppc</option>
<option value='topic/ia64-8_1'>topic/ia64-8_1</option>
<option value='topic/mandrakesoft'>topic/mandrakesoft</option>
<option value='topic/mlcd4'>topic/mlcd4</option>
<option value='topic/ppp'>topic/ppp</option>
<option value='topic/rp-pppoe'>topic/rp-pppoe</option>
<option value='topic/switching_to_dnf'>topic/switching_to_dnf</option>
<option value='topic/switching_to_urpmi'>topic/switching_to_urpmi</option>
<option value='topic/unlabeled-1.1.1'>topic/unlabeled-1.1.1</option>
<option value='topic/v_webmin_0_87'>topic/v_webmin_0_87</option>
<option value='topic/x86_64-branch'>topic/x86_64-branch</option>
<option value='user/animtim/designWork'>user/animtim/designWork</option>
<option value='user/colin/rescue-systemd'>user/colin/rescue-systemd</option>
<option value='user/ennael/mga6'>user/ennael/mga6</option>
<option value='user/erwan/bug-13680'>user/erwan/bug-13680</option>
<option value='user/jibz/aarch64'>user/jibz/aarch64</option>
<option value='user/martinw/mga6'>user/martinw/mga6</option>
<option value='user/pterjan/arm64'>user/pterjan/arm64</option>
</select> <input type='submit' value='switch'/></form></td></tr>
<tr><td class='sub'>Mageia Installer and base platform for many utilities</td><td class='sub right'>Thierry Vignaud [tv]</td></tr></table>
<table class='tabs'><tr><td>
<a href='/software/drakx/?h=2.46.3'>summary</a><a href='/software/drakx/refs/?h=2.46.3&amp;id=0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071'>refs</a><a href='/software/drakx/log/perl-install/standalone/drakconnect?h=2.46.3'>log</a><a href='/software/drakx/tree/perl-install/standalone/drakconnect?h=2.46.3&amp;id=0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071'>tree</a><a class='active' href='/software/drakx/commit/perl-install/standalone/drakconnect?h=2.46.3&amp;id=0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071'>commit</a><a href='/software/drakx/diff/perl-install/standalone/drakconnect?h=2.46.3&amp;id=0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071'>diff</a><a href='/software/drakx/stats/perl-install/standalone/drakconnect?h=2.46.3'>stats</a></td><td class='form'><form class='right' method='get' action='/software/drakx/log/perl-install/standalone/drakconnect'>
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<div class='path'>path: <a href='/software/drakx/commit/?h=2.46.3&amp;id=0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071'>root</a>/<a href='/software/drakx/commit/perl-install?h=2.46.3&amp;id=0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071'>perl-install</a>/<a href='/software/drakx/commit/perl-install/standalone?h=2.46.3&amp;id=0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071'>standalone</a>/<a href='/software/drakx/commit/perl-install/standalone/drakconnect?h=2.46.3&amp;id=0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071'>drakconnect</a></div><div class='content'><div class='cgit-panel'><b>diff options</b><form method='get'><input type='hidden' name='h' value='2.46.3'/><input type='hidden' name='id' value='0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071'/><table><tr><td colspan='2'/></tr><tr><td class='label'>context:</td><td class='ctrl'><select name='context' onchange='this.form.submit();'><option value='1'>1</option><option value='2'>2</option><option value='3' selected='selected'>3</option><option value='4'>4</option><option value='5'>5</option><option value='6'>6</option><option value='7'>7</option><option value='8'>8</option><option value='9'>9</option><option value='10'>10</option><option value='15'>15</option><option value='20'>20</option><option value='25'>25</option><option value='30'>30</option><option value='35'>35</option><option value='40'>40</option></select></td></tr><tr><td class='label'>space:</td><td class='ctrl'><select name='ignorews' onchange='this.form.submit();'><option value='0' selected='selected'>include</option><option value='1'>ignore</option></select></td></tr><tr><td class='label'>mode:</td><td class='ctrl'><select name='dt' onchange='this.form.submit();'><option value='0' selected='selected'>unified</option><option value='1'>ssdiff</option><option value='2'>stat only</option></select></td></tr><tr><td/><td class='ctrl'><noscript><input type='submit' value='reload'/></noscript></td></tr></table></form></div><table summary='commit info' class='commit-info'>
<tr><th>author</th><td>Thierry Vignaud &lt;tvignaud@mandriva.org&gt;</td><td class='right'>2005-02-22 16:43:43 +0000</td></tr>
<tr><th>committer</th><td>Thierry Vignaud &lt;tvignaud@mandriva.org&gt;</td><td class='right'>2005-02-22 16:43:43 +0000</td></tr>
<tr><th>commit</th><td colspan='2' class='sha1'><a href='/software/drakx/commit/perl-install/standalone/drakconnect?h=2.46.3&amp;id=0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071'>0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071</a> (<a href='/software/drakx/patch/perl-install/standalone/drakconnect?id=0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071'>patch</a>)</td></tr>
<tr><th>tree</th><td colspan='2' class='sha1'><a href='/software/drakx/tree/?h=2.46.3&amp;id=0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071'>e1cca94c6b32e84109c45309f011e953811b3e50</a> /<a href='/software/drakx/tree/perl-install/standalone/drakconnect?h=2.46.3&amp;id=0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071'>perl-install/standalone/drakconnect</a></td></tr>
<tr><th>parent</th><td colspan='2' class='sha1'><a href='/software/drakx/commit/perl-install/standalone/drakconnect?h=2.46.3&amp;id=46c48257fb3207c5640907c2475974a71bec8ebe'>46c48257fb3207c5640907c2475974a71bec8ebe</a> (<a href='/software/drakx/diff/perl-install/standalone/drakconnect?h=2.46.3&amp;id=0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071&amp;id2=46c48257fb3207c5640907c2475974a71bec8ebe'>diff</a>)</td></tr><tr><th>download</th><td colspan='2' class='sha1'><a href='/software/drakx/snapshot/drakx-0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071.tar'>drakx-0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071.tar</a><br/><a href='/software/drakx/snapshot/drakx-0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071.tar.gz'>drakx-0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071.tar.gz</a><br/><a href='/software/drakx/snapshot/drakx-0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071.tar.bz2'>drakx-0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071.tar.bz2</a><br/><a href='/software/drakx/snapshot/drakx-0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071.tar.xz'>drakx-0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071.tar.xz</a><br/><a href='/software/drakx/snapshot/drakx-0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071.zip'>drakx-0553bb6908f22e8623a0530c6c36410f4e457071.zip</a><br/></td></tr></table>
<div class='commit-subject'>unbreak blino change: reuse string from mcc since that's what will be displayed and allter *all* callers</div><div class='commit-msg'>