automake
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: More an autopackage


From: Geoffrey Wossum
Subject: Re: More an autopackage
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 20:53:14 -0600 (CST)

> > Anyway, here's some of my thoughts about it:
> > 1) written in Python 
> 
> Wouldn't Perl5 be a more widely acceptable choice?  Considerably so? 
> (Indeed, isn't automake already in Perl?  Why choose something different? 
> Especially when that something is considerably less widely installed?) 

I originally considered Perl5, basically because automake is in Perl
(Perl4 to be precise).  But this project screams object-oriented, and
Perl's OO support is pretty kludgy.  I think Larry Wall even says that in
Programming Perl.  Python's OOP support is much better.  Passing self to
every method is kindof kludgy, but overall it's much better than Perl's
OO.

I've never written a large project in Python, but I have in Perl.  Another
reason I would choose Python ;)  In the same vein, I have noticed a shift
in the community's preferred scripting language away from Perl towards
Python.  This said, I would still probably choose Perl over Python for a
quick and dirty script.

If someone wants to contribute code to the project, but don't know the
implementation language, Python is much easier to learn than Perl.  I know
a large number of programming languages.  C, C++, Java, Visual Basic, 
Perl, Python, LISP, Scheme, Tcl, Fortran, S370/68k/x86/PIC ASM... most
languages that have enjoyed significant popularity except for COBOL.  And
Perl was by far the most difficult to learn.

The install base is an important issue.  My Solaris, Tru64, and Irix boxes
have Perl, but not Python.  But they didn't come with Perl out of the
box, somebody had to install Perl.  So I don't think also installing
Python is that big of a deal.  And all modern Linux distros include Perl
and Python out of the box.

> No promises.  But I could try to have a quick look at Solaris pkgadd/pkgrm
> issues once you have got started. 

Thanks.

---
Geoffrey Wossum
address@hidden





reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]