Re: "dselect" replacement team

[Mark Eichin <eichin@cygnus.com>]

> If it gets written in G++, then it is available on any platform that can
> compile gcc.

My life would be a lot easier (or would have been, in my previous life
as a Cygnus G++ support engineer) if this were actually true.  You've
also got a number of "interesting" constraints on the linker that many
times prevent g++ from working in any meaningful way [if static
constructors don't work, gee, neither does cout :-}]

Plus you've got some "interesting" interactions between libg++ io and
stdio [especially on linux systems, though they show up elsewhere.].

I'm not trying to convince -- only to inform... and to make sure that
you're more aware of the implications of using G++ for a critical tool
(which dpkg is, and dselect is not -- do all of non-x86 debian targets
even *have* dselect yet? :-) 

As long as you are fully informed, I am quite willing to trust your
judgement, and eager to see your results.
								_Mark_

ps. Remember also that there have been efforts to make the linux
kernel build with G++ (not as an OOp language, but as a "better C")
and they've always fallen aside, usually because they trigger bugs in
G++ that aren't *in* the C frontend.