From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Jul 16 1:19:21 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 4143937B400 for ; Tue, 16 Jul 2002 01:19:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from jkh-gw.queasyweasel.com (adsl-64-173-3-158.dsl.sntc01.pacbell.net [64.173.3.158]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7642543E5E for ; Tue, 16 Jul 2002 01:19:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@queasyweasel.com) Received: from mango.queasyweasel.com (mango.freebsd.com [64.173.15.99]) by jkh-gw.queasyweasel.com (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id g6G8J4ux011916; Tue, 16 Jul 2002 01:19:04 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@queasyweasel.com) Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 01:19:42 -0700 Subject: Re: Package system flaws? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v535) Cc: freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG To: jos@catnook.com From: Jordan K Hubbard In-Reply-To: <20020716003456.GD54500@lizzy.catnook.com> Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.535) 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 Guys, If libh ever makes it off the ground, you can bet that Tcl will enter the base system fairly rapidly since it will be required for everything from bootstrapping packages onto the system to actually installing the system itself. In such a case, you can also rest assured that Tcl *will* have a more than justifiable purpose and I'm sure that even the anti-bloatists will be forced to grudgingly concede the point. Their principle, and successful, objection before was that Tcl entered the base system long before there was such a demonstrable need for it and it was justifiably kicked right back out again. The issue with Perl is orthogonal since it wasn't quite as insinuated into the brick-and-mortar foundations of the system (some of those stray .pl admin scripts notwithstanding) and was much harder to maintain than the _current_ releases of Tcl are. I also agree that Tcl has had a rocky history in terms of its upgrade strategy ("it must be Tuesday, time to break API stability again!") but, for better or worse, development of the language seems to have reached a plateau with 8.4 and API stability ever since 8.0 was released has been pretty good, so I think the old arguments are simply outdated. In any case, the anti-bloatists can also leave their pitchforks and torches in their closets for the time being since all of this is also contingent on libh finally reaching the point where it is a truly effective replacement for pkg_* and sysinstall, something which is still a ways off if it happens at all. - Jordan On Monday, July 15, 2002, at 05:34 PM, Jos Backus wrote: > On Mon, Jul 15, 2002 at 09:44:45PM +0700, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote: >> We did have a very powerful one until recently -- Perl. I guess the >> fact it was removed from the base is for a very good reason. > > I don't think ``we don't want a powerful scripting language in the base > system'' was one of them. > >> Oh please, can you show us something essential for base enough that >> could not be implemented in a sh/sed/awk way? I somewhat doubt it. > > portupgrade :-) (Sure, anything that can be done in Ruby can be done > in C; no > need to make that argument again). > >> 'cmon, it's pretty clear that Perl or Ruby is more of an overhead >> than of >> worth. Traditionally, UNIX lived for 30+ years without need for a >> monster >> like Perl or Ruby, in the base, clearly showing us that sh/awk/sed is >> a >> [very] decent scripting facility. > > As must be clear by now, I respectfully beg to differ. > > -- > 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 > -- Jordan K. Hubbard Engineering Manager, BSD technology group Apple Computer To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message