Re: Emacs in build-depends of python2.1
>
> Converting a hack to another hack with no strong reason nor fun is not
> exactly what I dream of every night.
>
> So, I am not sure that such a conversion would be worth the time spent.
> If despite all of this you still want to tackle on this task and have
> some ELisp questions (I think it should be OK with Python ;-), feel
> free to ask me, but don't count on me to do this. Sorry.
>
The problem is we now have a piece of a fairly common package using script(s)
in a language few understand. So if you get hit by a bus someone WILL have to
reverse engineer that script. This is the same reason I dislike
build-essential requiring Haskell. It is a fine language but the number of
people in Debian who speak it is probably about 20 or 30.
In essential we have sh, sed and awk guaranteed. Just beyond that is perl and
python. Then there is C(++). Once you move beyond these the chances of the
typical developer being able to debug, help, or rewrite is small. elisp is
even more specialized then just lisp. And yes it is annoying when you do
'apt-get --build python' to discover suddenly that emacs is going to be
installed if for no other reasons than the build system just gained another
50+mb in size (some of us use chroots on smaller drives).
I understand you not feeling the need is high to change now. But bear these
thoughts in mind in the future.
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