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Re: "dselect" replacement team



"Brian C. White" <bcwhite@verisim.com> writes:
> > At this point, I'm not overly impressed with the direction this team
> > seems to be heading---it seems to be more oriented towards the ivory
> > tower ideal of "We'll use all the best possible tools", instead of the
> > more utilitarian "We'll use the minimum of tools to get our work
> > done".
> 
> <laugh out loud>
> 
> Let's see...
> 
>  - Friday night: 	team is put together
>  - Saturday: 		deity list starts getting organized
>  - Sunday:		some discussions on how to do things
>  - Monday morning:	Mike complains that we're doing it all wrong
> 
> <laughing continues>

Here's what I've heard from your lead coder so far:

 - He has said that he thinks the essential component of the Debian
system should be rewritten from the ground up.

 - He has said he thinks it should be done in a language that isn't
guaranteed to exist on platforms to which we might want to port
Debian.

 - He has complained that he finds the existing source hard to
understand, when, for better or worse, it's all the documentation that
exists.

 - He has posted wild allegations that dpkg is still written in perl,
without apparently taking the time to look at the makefile and/or do
`file /usr/bin/dpkg`

Things I would have hoped to have heard, but haven't:

 - Discussion of creating a test suite for the code, so that we can
assure ourselves that new features work as advertised (thus avoiding
another epochs fiasco), and that changes to the code don't break
existing behavior.

So, no, Brian, with all due respect to you, so far I'm not impressed.

Tell me why I shouldn't be worried.  Show me you're being sensitive to
the issues of bootstrapping Debian to new systems.  Show me a lead
coder who examines the existing code before making grand statements of
intent.  Show me an intent to produce a solid system.

Then I'll shut up.

Mike.


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