Re: On things
>
> In your message of Tue, 01 Feb 1994 22:36:00 PST, you write:
> +---------------
> | > What was "the entirely shameful Perl rewrite"? Is anything done
> | > voluntarily really shameful, even if it isn't as good as one might
> |
> | It is shameful because Ian was criticized for use of a Bourne shell
> | script, the issue was debated, and Ian believed that the people who
> | told him that Perl was the way to go would do more than volunteer.
> | Volunteering is easy if you never do the work.
> +------------->8
>
> This may be because I engaged one of the volunteers in mail and explained why
> it wasn't such a good idea. One idea he floated was to save space by dumping
> the *shell* and rewriting all the shell scripts as Perl scripts... imagine
> having to track down all the scripts on the boot floppy plus all the package
> install scripts and rewrite them to not require any shell.
>
> ++Brandon
> --
> Brandon S. Allbery kf8nh@kf8nh.ampr.org bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org
> "MSDOS didn't get as bad as it is overnight -- it took over ten years
> of careful development." ---dmeggins@aix1.uottawa.ca
>
I think it is time for me to say something here, too. I was one of the
volunteers. The primary problem (from my viewpoint) is that we are
constrained by the Linux curses library. Converting the shell script(s)
to perl would be straightforward. However, folks wanted a nice `gui'
look to the installation script and that meant coming up with a `curseperl'.
I was never able to get a `curseperl' to work properly with either
the standarad libcurses or libncurses. I see that there is a new
ncurses library in beta now. I haven't tried it yet but will do so. In
the meantime, if someone has a curseperl that works properly please
arrange to get me a copy and I will begin work on conversion.
--
Johannes Grosen grosen@argv.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu
System Administrator
Intelligent Systems Cluster, Room 244 IACC Building
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND USA 51805 (701) 237-8282
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