On Fri, 2002-05-24 at 21:41, Seth Nickell wrote:
> Such an "interface" would not pass API review in GNOME. I really don't
> understand the point of making this a "command line interface" rather
> than a real library API ??? Its just harder for everyone involved.
Please don't generalize like that. For people writing shell scripts, a
library is useless; a command line interface is infinitely more useful.
A C API does a Perl or Ruby programmer precious good, and such API may
continue to have (I hesitate to use the term "brain damaged", but others
may) C-isms even after a wrapper is put around it, so programmers in
those languages may continue to use the command line interface.
Since much of Debian's second tier administration tools are shell or
Perl scripts (and increasingly Python as well, I guess), it makes sense
to have evolved this way, rather than a C library. I very much enjoy the
command line interface to APT and dpkg, and would be very dissapointed
if they were not as rich a vocabulary as they are.
--
- Joe Wreschnig <piman@sacredchao.net> - http://www.sacredchao.net
"What I did was justified because I had a policy of my own... It's
okay to be different, to not conform to society."
-- Chen Kenichi, Iron Chef Chinese
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