Re: texi2dvi: set -e, use tar

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Akim Demaille <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden (Karl Berry),  address@hidden
> Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 10:38:51 +0100
> 
> >>> "Eli" == Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>  > It strikes me that we should reimplement texi2dvi as a C program.
>  > Beyond certain level of complexity (which IMHO texi2dvi passed way
>  > back), there's no reasons to continue to stick to a shell script.
> 
> I disagree, C is about the worse language to implement texi2dvi (well,
> what is it actual good for?).

The fact is we have the entire Texinfo package written in C, not to
mention other TeX-related utilities.  All texi2dvi does is run several
programs several times until two files compare equal; this is a much
easier task than what most other Texinfo programs do, since almost no
text processing is involved.

On a more general note, most GNU packages are written in C, so
personal preferences aside, C is the main programming language of the
GNU Project.

> Using a compiled language to coordinate programs would be a big
> error.

Sorry, I don't see why, and I'm also not sure what program
coordination we need here.  The basic algorithm of texi2dvi hasn't
changed in ages, all we do is make it a little more robust here, a
little more user-friendly there.