Subject: Languages used in install scripts...

From: Michael Alan Dorman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 08:44:06 -0400

I will say nothing more of the differences in language assesments than
this: A sloppy programmer can screw up in any language, no matter how
elegant.  Converseley, a careful programmer can write good quality,
well documented production code in any language, no matter its
kitchen-sink roots.  Choice of language does not make for good
programs, period.

That out of the way, *IF* the project chooses to mandate a language
for installation scripts, the *ONLY* reasonable choice is sh, with the
addition of any tools available in the base system (including awk,
but, despite my bias, excluding perl, since it's not fully installed
on the base disks).

Otherwise, people should be allowed to use whatever the hell they
want, without restrictions based on anyone's perceptions of that
language's elegance, notational purity or maintainability.

Mike.
--
"Don't let me make you unhappy by failing to be contrary enough...."

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From: Dale Scheetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 13:36:18 -0400 (EDT)

> language's elegance, notational purity or maintainability.
Well, Mike, the discussion is about installation scripting languages (I
think) so the choice is not completely open. Perl is provided in the base
system so that it can be used for pre and post installation scripts as
well as configuration scripts. If perl is pulled from the base system then
packages that wish to use a particular scripting language will need to put
them in the pre-depends, unless I have misunderstood yet another feature
of dpkg.
My most unfavorite language is Basic, yet one of the programs that I am
most proud of, I wrote in Basic. It seems to me, that like Basic, the one
thing that Perl has is almost universal understanding. Like Basic, you can
almost always find someone who as written code in Perl and is competent
enough to do it again. Shell scripting is both more universal and less
transportable. If we could require Bash, for instance, the variability
would go away, but we have tch enthusiasts as well as others that are
enough different to make a "universal" shell script a non-trivial
exercise. Perl works the same in either shell environment and is,
therefore, more desirable.

Luck,

Dwarf

------------                                          --------------

aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 877-0257
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From: Juergen Menden <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 12:00:30 +0200 (MET DST)

On Thu, 25 Jul 1996, Dale Scheetz wrote:
> 
> Perl is provided in the base system [...]

hmm, i havn't found perl*.deb in binary-m68k/base so i looked
at binary-i386 and what did i found?

perl is not provided in the base system.

jjm

-- 
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e-mail: [email-masked]     | of anyone else on this planet.

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From: Dale Scheetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 08:14:30 -0400 (EDT)

> perl is not provided in the base system.
You are absolutely correct. My appologies for the missinformation.

Dwarf

------------ If you don't see what you want, just ask --------------

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From: "James A. Robinson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 08:58:27 -0400

> You are absolutely correct. My appologies for the missinformation.

No, you were correct the first time:

[lestat:~]$ tar tzf 1996_6_16/base1_1.tgz |grep perl
usr/bin/perl
usr/lib/dpkg/methods/ftp/perl/
usr/lib/dpkg/methods/ftp/perl/Net/
usr/lib/dpkg/methods/ftp/perl/Net/FTP.pm
usr/lib/dpkg/methods/ftp/perl/Net/Netrc.pm
usr/lib/dpkg/methods/ftp/perl/Net/Socket.pm
usr/lib/perl5/
usr/lib/perl5/DebianNet.pm
usr/lib/perl5/i486-linux/
usr/lib/perl5/i486-linux/5.002/
usr/lib/perl5/i486-linux/5.002/auto/
usr/lib/perl5/i486-linux/5.002/auto/Socket/
usr/lib/perl5/i486-linux/5.002/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
usr/lib/perl5/i486-linux/5.002/auto/Socket/Socket.so
usr/lib/perl5/i486-linux/5.002/Config.pm
usr/lib/perl5/AutoLoader.pm
usr/lib/perl5/Carp.pm
usr/lib/perl5/Cwd.pm
usr/lib/perl5/DynaLoader.pm
usr/lib/perl5/Exporter.pm
usr/lib/perl5/File/
usr/lib/perl5/File/Basename.pm
usr/lib/perl5/File/Find.pm
usr/lib/perl5/File/Path.pm
usr/lib/perl5/Socket.pm
usr/lib/perl5/auto/
usr/lib/perl5/auto/DynaLoader/
usr/lib/perl5/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
usr/lib/perl5/auto/Socket/
usr/lib/perl5/auto/Socket/autosplit.ix
usr/lib/perl5/strict.pm
usr/lib/perl5/vars.pm

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From: Juergen Menden <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 17:09:26 +0200 (MET DST)

> No, you were correct the first time:

silly me. sorry for that. i'm not very much into the 
booting procedure of the intels.

but then, shouldn't perl_xxx.deb go into unstable/binary-xxx/base?

jjm

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From: Dale Scheetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 14:43:06 -0400 (EDT)

> No, you were correct the first time:
I stand corrected. I had mistakenly thought myself to be in error. I will
try not to do that again ;-)

Later,

Dwarf

------------ If you don't see what you want, just ask --------------

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From: "James A. Robinson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 18:01:29 -0400

> but then, shouldn't perl_xxx.deb go into unstable/binary-xxx/base?

Perhaps -- but it would have to be a different perl package then the
one in devel/.  The one on the base disks is a stripped down version
of perl, it doesn't have all the lib/perl stuff, no manpages, none of
the special cheader-to-perlheader binaries, or other support files.

Jim

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From: Dominik Kubla <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 11:07:31 +0200

Maybe we should define 'base' more clearly.  I would like to propose the
following definition for base:

  The base section contains the following packages:
  * Boot utilies (platform dependant)
  * The Linux kernel and all related utilities.
  * Basic networking utilites (IP networking is an integral part of Unix!)
  * All required utilities according to POSIX 1003.2.
  * Everything needed to bootstrap the base system (yes this means gcc
    and binutils should be BASE: we are not unbundling like SUN does!)

Comments?
  Dominik

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From: [email-masked] (Bernd Eckenfels)
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 18:56:53 +0200 (MET DST)

Hi,

>   * The Linux kernel and all related utilities.
ok...

>   * Basic networking utilites (IP networking is an integral part of Unix!)

"Utilities needed to get the base system connected for installing the rest
via nfs/ftp."

>   * All required utilities according to POSIX 1003.2.

Umm.. I'm not sure how many tools those are. Do u have an idea if we have
the cmplete posix set?

>     and binutils should be BASE: we are not unbundling like SUN does!)

Definetely not. We dont get this on the base disks and I dont think all the
users want a compiler on their system. You only have to remove it, so why
bother with it?

Greetings
Bernd

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From: Lars Wirzenius <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Jul 1996 02:14:33 +0300

>   * Basic networking utilites (IP networking is an integral part of Unix!)

But it is quite useless for many people, except for localhost stuff.
I'd keep the number of networking utilities down.  (This may or may not
be an objection, depending on your definition of "basic networking 
utility".)

>     and binutils should be BASE: we are not unbundling like SUN does!)

If someone wants to use gcc, they install gcc.  There's no point in
forcing gcc down everyone's throats.  That's almost as bad as requiring
that everyone install sources.  Disk space costs money.  Network bandwidth
costs money.  Dpkg and dselect make it pretty trivial to add stuff to
the base system.

-- 
Lars Wirzenius <[email-masked]> <http://www.iki.fi/liw/>
Please don't Cc: me when replying to my message on a mailing list.