On Friday, February 06, Manoj Srivastava wrote
>
> Christian> Please drop perl and use C. C programs don't even *need* an
> Christian> interpreter taking up space on the hard drive... and even
> Christian> perl is written in C! :-)
>
> This is not an pissing contest. Interpreted languages, both
> Perl and python, make it far easier to rapidly prototype code, and
> even to write stable products in. Rejecting either in favour of C
> merely shows you have no grasp of the concepts being debated here.
Hmm. I *did* add a smiley. Maybe I should have been clearer, but I was
trying to point out where "drop language Y, everything that can be done in
Y can also be done in language X anyways" types of arguments lead. Call it
reduction ad absurdum, or call it a bit of sarcasm if you want. Next time I
promise to be even more obvious and use machine language as my "you can do
everything in it" language.
>
> Christian> We can't force developers to install lots of packages, but
> Christian> we can force them to install a few. And it's not like
> Christian> python-base is very big:
>
> Yes; but the point is that we already have perl-base in
> Debian, and it is essintial; python base need not be installed.
>
> I think it would indeed be better if lintian (as well as any
> other package) minimized the dependencies. But it is, after all, your
> package, and your decision; I just object to the reasons being
> given.
Small correction: lintian is not my package.
Hey, I think that minimizing dependencies is a good idea too... probably
just like everyone else here. But I'll take a python/perl policy checker
over no policy checker any day. The developers who think that a developer
tool that needs python is a bigger annoyance than "dpkg -i python.deb"
should... start coding.
Stuff that needs to be on every Debian machine should be written in perl
(or shell script, or compiled), because we don't want to have to add a new
language to base. But requiring even people who are writing for a much
smaller audience of 300 Debian users (i.e. the Debian developers) to also
restrict themselves to perl/C/sh just seems... needlessly restrictive. If
everybody did that ("you have to use these established languages to write
your code and nothing else"), there'd be no language innovation.
Christian
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