From owner-freebsd-arch Mon Jul 15 11:29:39 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C1DA737B400 for ; Mon, 15 Jul 2002 11:29:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from w250.z064001178.sjc-ca.dsl.cnc.net (adsl-66.218.45.239.dslextreme.com [66.218.45.239]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 14A3A43E58 for ; Mon, 15 Jul 2002 11:29:36 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jos@catnook.com) Received: (qmail 47099 invoked by uid 1000); 15 Jul 2002 18:29:57 -0000 Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 11:29:35 -0700 From: Jos Backus To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Package system flaws? Message-ID: <20020715182957.GA32690@lizzy.catnook.com> Reply-To: jos@catnook.com Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org References: <200207151718.g6FHIkof007662@dotar.thuvia.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200207151718.g6FHIkof007662@dotar.thuvia.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.1i Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Mon, Jul 15, 2002 at 06:18:46PM +0100, Mark Valentine wrote: > I can do a heck of a lot with sh/expr/sed/join/etc (and awk when it gets > serious), and I try to stick to the POSIX.2 subset. > > Beyond that there's a perfectly good C compiler. The fact that it can be done using these tools doesn't mean that they are the most appropriate choice. Of course many people (especially those who feel scripting languages are silly toys only to be used for non-real-world applications) will disagree with this stance. Anyway, I have said what I wanted to say; I'm not going to argue this any further. > An individual OS can add whatever frills it wants to the "base" system, but > it doesn't mean much to me as a proponent of portable software until all the > platforms I support do likewise. If portability is at all important, I think we should abandon discussing the FreeBSD pkg_* tools (and portupgrade) and focus on what the OpenPackages people are doing. > > We should pick one that has a reasonable chance of being able to be > > supported in the base and stick with it. > > Well, if we can't handle Tcl in the base system, I doubt much else has a look > in... FwIu, Tcl is a bad example because of their internally inconsistent versioning; new versions are not backward-compatible enough, etc. > > Perl had build and packaging issues > > which made it a nightmare to support, fine, so let's pick another one that > > does a better job than awk/sh/etc. > > I'd like to hear you name one that would fit the bill, never mind find a > concensus... First we need to decide if we even _want_ a more powerful scripting language included. It sounds like the current consensus is a resounding NO. However, applications like portupgrade are much easier written in a scripting language than using the standard tools. Scripting languages, for all their faults, also reach a larger audience of potential contributors than the standard tools do. All imo, of course. Cheers, -- Jos Backus _/ _/_/_/ Santa Clara, CA _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ jos@catnook.com _/_/ _/_/_/ require 'std/disclaimer' To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message