Re: [Xen-devel] Re: [patch rfc 1/3] xen arch header rework.

[Jacob Gorm Hansen <jacobg@xxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2006-10-11 at 13:54 +0200, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:

> I'm using perl just because perl is _the_ classic language for text
> processing jobs like that one and I've already hacked up perl scripts
> before python started to exist ;)

We all have our reasons. I gave up on BASIC a while ago though, and my
68K skill have not been very much in demand either lately.

> These days every programming language on earth has bindings for the PCRE
> library, so switching to something else should be possible without too
> much trouble.  It wouldn't be /me writing that script though.
> 
> I don't think adding perl as build dependency is a big problem, almost
> everyone has it on the machine anyway.  Try "rpm -e perl" on any linux
> distro and watch the error message with the long list of stuff which
> depends on perl.

Yes it's a terrible world already, lets make things worse. I think for a
project like Xen to be successful in the long term, it is necessary to
abide to a set of rules or a 'taste' of what should and should not be
allowed. For a while there was a tendency in Xen to fault in any odd
piece of software that some developer had fallen in love with (like
Twisted). Most of that stuff is thankfully gone now, because someone
(other than the people pushing for the inclusion originally I am sure)
went through the hard work of rewriting things. The problem with Perl is
that quite often people tend to depend on various modules, and the poor
(Perl-hating) user ends up spending hours fetching stuff from CPAN just
to make the life of the (Perl-loving and lazy) developer a little bit
easier. If you don't want to spend the time necessary to port your
scripts to Xen's scripting language of choice, and noone else can be
convinced to do it for you, I think your patch should simply be
rejected.

Jacob


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