Re: dpkg-scanlibs
Previously Evan Prodromou wrote:
> Sure, of course (although I'm a little questioning of whether dpkg-dev
> is really "upstream"...). I'm just trying to inform his design
> decision. Or is the power of the developer so absolute that I can't
> even give advice?
You can give advice. I can ignore it :)
> Here would be my points:
>
> 1) Converting the scripts is simple make-work. It doesn't add
> features, only changes the implementation. (Adding features
> WHILE converting, of course, is a confounding factor that's
> just going to introduce more bugs.)
Any conversion is bound to change the behaviour subtly. In this
case the new code definitely behaves different, but that is on
purpose (and one of the reasons for the rewrite).
> 2) Converting the scripts is like writing them over from
> scratch. You get the same kind of bugginess as from a first
> implementation.
That's not entirely true. When you do a rewrite you get things you don't
have when you do the initial implementation:
* you can take advantage of the experience with the previous
implementation(s) which is likely to result in an improved design
* after years of working with an existing codebase and modifying it
it will become hard to maintain and will make it more likely
you introduce bugs by accident.
> 4) Adding another language means requiring an extra piece of
> software (python) for Debian developers.
lintian will be rewritten in python, reportbug is a python script,
sgml-tools2 requires it, apt-python seems to become more popular.
Looks like python is here to stay, and I bet most developers have
already installed it.
> 5) Adding another language means requiring a new language for
> other devscript developers, bug checkers, and the like.
How is this different from your previous point?
Wichert.
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