Re: Bug#196800: flex mustn't assume stdint.h is available on allplatforms
On Jun 18, Manoj Srivastava (srivasta@debian.org) wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Jun 2003 22:55:53 -0400, Neil Roeth <neil@debian.org> said:
> > On Jun 13, Daniel Jacobowitz (dan@debian.org) wrote:
> >> Certainly you have not broken Debian; but I maintain that this
> >> short-sightedness does damage Debian's usefulness as a development
> >> platform, for all those targets which many more practical
> >> developers must support in order to do their jobs.
>
> > I think this is an excellent point. I can think of many times when
> > I've done development work in Debian and ported the result to
> > Solaris, IRIX or HPUX. It is, of course, not a requirement for
> > Debian that this be easy, but the easier it is, the more convincing
> > the argument for integrating Debian into a mixed *nix environment,
> > for everyone from developers to CIOs.
>
> Fine. You can then still choose to use flex-old (of course,
> any C++ scanners you have shall fail to work with gcc 3.3, and even
> for C scanners all bets are off wrt new compilers).
>
> Or you can use the new flex, and get scanners that require
> conforming implementations.
>
> Debian offers you the cjoice -- since there is none which is
> unequivocally better.
I was addressing the more general "short-sightedness" point, not the specific
flex issue. I suppose I could have stated that explicitly. "[package] works
with all 11 architectures that comprise debian" is short sighted if there is
significant value to cross platform development, where cross platform means
Debian to non-Debian, not Debian arch to other Debian arch.
--
Neil Roeth
Reply to: