Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 08:34:19 +0200 (MEST) From: Søren Schmidt <sos@sos.freebsd.dk> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: What's the interest in standard tools rewritten in perl? Message-ID: <199708180634.IAA01628@sos.freebsd.dk> In-Reply-To: <19970817230359.JX15769@uriah.heep.sax.de> from J Wunsch at "Aug 17, 97 11:03:59 pm"
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In reply to J Wunsch who wrote:
> As Søren Schmidt wrote:
>
> > I wouldn't bet on that 80% factor, if somebody is going to rewrite the
> > base utils. For one this is a total waste of time (and maybe talent),
> > the other is that it will render us completely incompatible with the
> > rest of the BSD world. I think that nobody would be stupid enough to
> > willingly takeover that kind of maintenance burden...
>
> We've been there before, so this will be my last followup in this
> thread. (Please, don't redirect any future personal Cc's to me
> either, i'm getting sick of Cc's for lengthy threads i'm not
> interested in.)
Then don't participate :)
> Go and read Net/2's whereis(1) code, and then decide which one is
> easier maintenable. (Sorry, the Net/2 code is `tainted', so you need
> a FreeBSD 1.x CD-ROM for it. This was another reason to use Perl for
> me, the structure is now so clearly different that nobody could claim
> a copyright violation, even though the user interface is basically the
> same. Don't count on the 4.4BSD-Lite version at all, it's totally
> crippled, compared to the historic one. I wouldn't have rewritten it
> at all otherwise.)
>
> Scripting languages are mainly used to _reduce_ the maintenance
> effort. Wonder why phk prefers Tcl for so many things? ;)
He's slightly insane too :)
> > If I want useless bloat
>
> That's why i told about a required *justification* before somebody's
> going to rewrite something. Just a rewrite only, with (nearly) the
> same features, the same bad structure, etc. constitutes IMHO not a
> justification. Neither of my quoted examples falls into this.
>
> The question whether some particular developer perhaps doesn't `speak'
> some of the used languages himself might bias him, but this alone
> doesn't establish ``unmaintenable code''. I bet even CVSup is
> probably way easier to maintain for me now than it would have been
> written in C++, or (*shudder* :) in C. And i've got absolutely no
> experience in M3 right now. But i've got no doubts i could learn it
> if necessary...
Cheap point, and mature/experienced programmers will genrally have no
problem adapting to a new language.
I think that my point about caompatibility etc still stands as is..
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Søren Schmidt (sos@FreeBSD.org) FreeBSD Core Team
Even more code to hack -- will it ever end
..
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