From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Aug 20 20:18:17 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) id UAA08938 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 20 Aug 1995 20:18:17 -0700 Received: from rover.village.org (rover.village.org [198.137.146.49]) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) with ESMTP id UAA08905 for ; Sun, 20 Aug 1995 20:18:05 -0700 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by rover.village.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) with SMTP id VAA01937; Sun, 20 Aug 1995 21:15:22 -0600 Message-Id: <199508210315.VAA01937@rover.village.org> To: Michael Smith Subject: Re: Any reason we can't enable the bus mouse by default? Cc: wosch@cs.tu-berlin.de, peter@bonkers.taronga.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-reply-to: Your message of Mon, 21 Aug 1995 11:46:14 +0930 Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 21:15:21 -0600 From: Warner Losh Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk : Perl, OTOH, is slow and bloated, and its syntax is merely incomprehensible. I don't think we want to get into a flame war about syntax here. Both can be incomprehensible, and neither are the best syntax for representing a kernel configuration. Personally, I love Perl's syntax and find TCL an utter nightmare, but I know that others differ. Personally, I really like the current config files. Maybe I'm weird, but they are useful, and a lot more "portable" from machine to machine than the way Linux, say, generates kernels (or did in the 1.1.x timeframe). That's not to say that a tool couldn't be written in perl or tcl. However, unless one of these is in bindist, I'd argue loudly and strongly that you don't want to rely on external, non-standard tools to generate something as basic as a kernel. m4 isn't bad, imho. Given what it has done with the sendmail.cf file mess, I think it might be a fruitful path to follow. The syntax might be ugly, true, but it would have the advantage of working on a fairly minimal system. Just my two cents. Warner