From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Jan 20 0: 7: 9 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (dsl-64-192-6-133.telocity.com [64.192.6.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id D215937B404 for ; Sun, 20 Jan 2002 00:07:04 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 78532 invoked by uid 100); 20 Jan 2002 08:07:03 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15434.31399.395825.846309@guru.mired.org> Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 02:07:03 -0600 To: Alfatrion Cc: questions@freebsd.org, rene@xs4all.nl Subject: Re: what is a good language for system administration? In-Reply-To: <122550064@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ From: "Mike Meyer" X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/0.44 (Python 2.2; freebsd-4.4-STABLE-i386) Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Alfatrion types: > rxn> What other language do you guys advise for system administration tasks such > rxn> as > rxn> * checking if a remote host is up > rxn> * pumping files & RAM data through external tools > rxn> * calling scripts written in the same language on a remote machine, to > rxn> 'pickup' data that was pumped to that machine by a local script. > > rxn> My wishlist for the language, prioritized with most important first: > rxn> * portability! to other UNIXes, and even Windoze. > rxn> * low system demands - it needs to run on lowend boxes aswell > rxn> * clear organization of any 'plugins' (which need to be replicated on other > rxn> machines aswell) > rxn> * a nice errorhandling & logging system > > rxn> I could really use some clues here. PHP comes into mind, but maybe there are > rxn> other better options? > > Two good choices are: Python and Java. The later is good for portabily > to other type of systems. Actually, I've found Python to be more portable than Java. Java's portability is limited by the availability of the Java VM, which isn't as portable as the Python VM. I've written Python GUI apps on Unix, and they run unmodified on Windows and the Mac. Both Java and Python support CORBA for remote work. Python is a bit uglier than Perl when it comes to munging strings and external commands, but is generally more readable. That it has a REPL and Perl doesn't is also nice. The really cool tool is JPython, a Python implementation in Java. You get the Python REPL running in an environment with your Java objects loaded, so you can test them interactively, or use Python to build debugging trusswork. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message