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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