Re: Feaping Creature-ism in core Debian Packages
Dale Scheetz wrote:
> is built using debhelper. debhelper will not build (I believe because perl
> is not installed...heaven forbid that perl be built with debhelper!), so I
> simply installed the binary-all package.
Yes, debhelper source-depends on perl, since it depends on perl and of
course it uses itself to build.
But I don't understand why you were trying to build debhelper, it is an
arch-all package and there's no reason at all to build them when you're
porting. That's the one thing you get for free when you start a new port,
after all.
And yes, perl is built partly with debhelper, but it won't fail if debhelper
isn't around to build it (you lose md5sums is all).
> If you can insert a call to a script into the rules file, you can
> certainly insert the contents of that script into the same rules file.
Average length of a debhelper program: 55 lines.
Average number of debhelper programs called per debian/rules file: 27
Size of the debhelper library: 371 lines.
Estimated growth of a debian/rules file if it included all necessary
debhelper code inline: 1829 lines.
(I'm assumming this would be written in shell; debhelper has been and was
about the same size back then).
Why is debhelper so big, you ask? Because it's robust and full-featured. Any
similar replacement will get about this big as it becomes robust and
full-featured as well.
> I encourage anyone who has used this tool on any of the
> standard packages to take steps to remove these dependencies from their
> packages.
Well as far as I'm concerned: use whatever you like. I'm not attached to
people using debhelper. Actually, I would much like to see a base system
that could built as an entirely self-contained process.
> It seems that we have been allowing perl to creep into critical portions
> of the installation process without resolving the consequeces of this
> action. Given that we continue to have recurring discussions about
> replacing bash with ash or some other POSIX sh, to reduce creeping
> bashisms, why are there not more outcries against the use of perl in
> installation and configuration scripting?
I really don't see at all how one follows from the other.
Oh, BTW have you noticed that dpkg-dev depends on perl? That it is in fact,
composed of perl scripts? That you cannot, therefore, build _any_ debian
package without perl?
> system construction tools either. Perl may never become a stable language,
> but even if it does in the future, it surely isn't stable right now, and
> should not be incorporated into critical system installation processes.
Perl 5 has been around for about 5 years. I think the quote is close to
"perl 5 has lasted longer than all pervious versions of perl combined"
(Larry Wall). It's surely a lot more stable than oh, libc.
--
see shy jo
Reply to: