On Fri, 2016-12-23 at 21:36 +0000, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> This list is about development of Debian.
>
> Not about how to raise money to ease developing Debian.
The first condition is fulfilled - the email is about getting
development done within Debian. In fact given ITP's I've seen floating
by, it's about something that is getting a lot of development done
within Debian.
Obviously it's the asking for money that rankles. If he was asking for
some rare hardware to test on, or documentation, or even assistance you
would be fine with it. Any normally I'd agree - money is such a
difficult topic. I also would intensely dislike seeing repeated posts
on this list begging for money on a promise of getting some work done.
But it should be obvious by now that isn't what's happening here. He
hasn't raised much of his target, but the work is getting done anyway.
Clearly his main passion is to get the JS development tools into
Debian. Money is just lubricant to make the task easier.
JS development; the techniques they use, the appalling version control,
the tendency to mash together various bits of code with no respect to
licences, the propensity to download code they are about to run from
random sites is must be contrary to the bulk of our standing
policies. Twisting this mess into something that can be used within
Debian is understandably difficult. But also necessary, given it is
the most active area development on the planet right now. [0]
So add he is cracking a very tough nut that no one else has much much
of a dint in so far, and maybe we can be a little flexible?
[0] I was proudly shown some production "web code" yesterday. Cutting
edge stuff, apparently. A single file contained HTML, css, and JS.
The first thing that hit me is JS didn't contain any semicolon's -
something I found disquieting. I was told "no, we don't use them
any more". But what about the problems with that pointed out by
"Javascript - The Good Parts", I asked. The reply was, "oh, no
one does this stuff without running it through an aggressive
linter, so its completely safe - mostly strictly type safe in
fact". (That was nice - evidently at least some of the scars
carried by the C using forbears had been noticed.)
But how could a linter process that, I asked - it was some unholy
mess of 3(? maybe more) intermixed languages. It gently explained
this was the source code form. A large tool chain would digest
it, turning it into something no sane human would look at. It was
broken into single language modules that were digestible by a
browser, downloaded by some dynamic linker created by the tool
chain that GET's the requisite parts as the running code links to
it while executing. It was complete with debugging symbols packed
into separate files, so they were there if needed. From the 1000'
view it was not unlike the m4 / cpp / gcc / ld / ldd GNU tool
chain - but created in some parallel universe.
Then I noticed some JS/Typescript/? syntax I hadn't seen before.
Not wanting to let any more grey show through I decided to chase
it down myself. It took a while - it was some variant of the
new JS spreader syntax - but it wasn't in ECMAScript 2015 and
wasn't recognised by any shipping browser. I knew this new
generation of our profession didn't share my aversion to
releasing production code developed in a language that hasn't been
standardised yet - but it wasn't in ECMAScript 2017 either.
Turned out it was a proposed addition to ECMAScript 2017
implemented by a grand total of 2 transpilers. In production
code! (The mere existence of those bloody transpilers makes the
statement "written in Javascript" near inscrutable.)
Many of bed rock of rules I built my career on are viewed as road
blocks to progress by this new generation, and treated accordingly.
It made me feel like I had been run over by the generation gap
bus. They feel similarly I think - now they have containers they
configure with makefiles and rebuild nightly, they are
understandably wondering where a monolithic solution like Debian
fits in. Pirate has evidently decided to work full time on
bringing these two worlds together. Yes, he is using a rather
"novel" approach, but the entire situation is novel. I say cut
him some slack.Attachment:
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