Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: community spirit

[Dustin Sallings]

On Nov 1, 2004, at 11:41, Jacob Gorm Hansen wrote:

> But you are still likely to run into an old system with a non-recent 
> version of python, and for which you have no root-access. I like 
> python for prototyping and scripting, but I also like being able to 
> checkout my code tree on _any_ machine, without having to talk the 
> admin into installing or upgrading, or spending my entire disk-quota 
> on a language-runtime and its supporting libraries.

	Right, I had a similar problem with a web visualization tool for tla 
written in python on a hosting provider that wouldn't upgrade their 
python.  I made the code work on an older version of python.  Of 
course, I think wrappers make a bit more sense in web tools and such.

> The problem with apt-get and similar easy-to-use tools is that 
> programmers just specifify all sorts of dependencies, instead of 
> putting in a tiny extra effort to make their software stand alone. 
> Look at how much easier installing software is on Windows versus on 
> Linux.

	I'm not sure I understand your argument.  Reuse is almost always 
better than rewriting something that already works.  Package managers 
can be pretty bad at dealing with this kind of thing, but I don't think 
it's the dependencies that are the problem.

> > > [...] I am running Ubuntu here
> >     Is it possible to run Ubuntu without python?
>
> Probably not, but I wish it was. Relying on scripting languages (other 
> than /bin/sh) for a production system is like relying on duct tape for 
> keeping your car running. I just meant to say that in general I like 
> what the Canonical people are doing.

	With this I pretty strongly disagree.  It's hard to do stuff correctly 
and efficiently in /bin/sh.  It's really hard to do stuff correctly in 
C and is generally more effort than necessary when you can have a 
couple lines of python do the task.  Scripts for system administration 
are transparent, and when written in a language that handles errors 
properly (or makes it possible to handle errors properly without a lot 
of effort), I think the system can become more ready to accept change 
which can lead to better long-term reliability and allow you to spend 
more time solving your larger problems.

> >     I agree with most of what you said, and I agree that it just 
> > feels wrong to have to install a wrapper to use a tool because the 
> > base tool doesn't cover some common cases, but the problem is not so 
> > much the list of dependencies.  The dependencies I had for installing 
> > tla in the first place were much larger than any wrapper I've used to 
> > date.
>
> As I recall, tla bundles everything it needs, and just produces a 
> single executable (I usually install just by dropping 'tla' in my 
> ~/bin).

	It does not...exactly.  On (I think) every system on which I've built 
tla, I've had to have my own build of gnu tar, and usually diff and 
patch utilities as well.  And then there's Solaris...  :)

--
Dustin Sallings