[M3devel] my status on win32

[Olaf Wagner]

Quoting Jay <jayk123 at hotmail.com>:

> I'll see about adding usage statements.
> Basically all the do* scripts accept a "command" and a list of packages.
> The commands are:
>   realclean
>   clean -- pretty useless imho
>   buildlocal -- the default
>   ship
>   buildship -- build and shpi
>   buildglobal

Actually, the more useful commands are

   build -- build with overrides to ROOT
   buildship (same as buildglobal) -- build with global package pool
   realclean -- completely delete derived target files

> do-pkg requires a list.

If you're doing you're own project, this may be what is most useful
-- if you use the scripts at all.

> What do folks think of deleting all of scripts\win and having only   
> scripts\python?
> I guess you have to try them out first, at least.Scripts\python   
> achieves parity pretty much, except for the more logging to files,   
> less logging to the console, that win\make-dist has.
>
> Furthermore, out on a limb, what do folks think of deleting most of   
> scripts\*.sh and having just Python?

I'd object to this. Shell is POSIX standard, and most of the
infrastructure is built on it; Python is nice to have, but should
not be a prerequisite to CM3.

> I doubt this will fly and I will try resist mentioning it often. :)
> In the interest of consensus here, though I doubt it will help, I'd   
> be open to rewriting python in Perl, or possiby even Tcl.

Why?

> I am also willing/interested in discussing the merits of these   
> languages, or an as yet undeveloped one "ideal language" (Modula-3 I  
>  don't think is it, sorry), but probably most people will find it a   
> waste of time. Where is the geek-out-really-badly mailing list? :)

I don't see the point in rewriting the scripts in yet other languages.
The purpose of the scripts is to support the installation, administration
and maintenance of the CM3 distribution. They were not intended as
a general purpose build or automation environment, though they can
be used for this purpose to a certain extent. But the main point is
that they are useful for the people maintaining the distribution.

We could think about rewriting everything in M3 to further reduce
the system dependencies, but this would not be as flexible as a
general scripting language. Quake would need to be substantially
extended, and Python is nice, but a huge software distribution in
itself, that should be independent of CM3.

POSIX shell is the one common interpreter I have found to be available
on almost all systems. (Even when we were programming point-of-sale
solutions on DOS in the early 90s we had ksh and other POSIX tools there
to emulate the Sun development environment we used on the servers.)
OK, on Windows you have to install it (e.g. in form of Cygwin) like
Python, but it's still the best choice wrt. availability and portability
I've found.

For general discussions of the advantages and disadvantage of
programming languages, some of the comp.lang.* newsgroups may
be the better choice, though I haven't read them for years now
and don't know if they're still alive.

As for the ideal language -- I don't think that there is any language
that could claim this. The advantages and disadvantages depend heavily
on the usage context, environment, and skills and understanding of the
programmers.

(M3 is pretty good though :-)

Olaf
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