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Yep, one of the things that would be hard to do would persuade many |
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of either the *need* for this or of its advantage. |
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|
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To move away from pros and cons for a moment, I see a need and an |
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advantage : |
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|
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[*need* is a word treated as meaning a potential *use for* something, |
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for now, a bit elastic perhaps]: |
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|
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1) [need or use:] by incorporating Python functionality (or other |
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programming lang) into a more extensible style shell, sh becomes |
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more widely accessibly to a number of community member who have |
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minimal->no sh scripting ability, but who are familiar with programming |
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of one flavour or another. I would have to agree, and say that my first |
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impulse is to just encourage them to learn to *bash* or whatever, but |
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everyone has their reasons. If a user was able to incorporate the |
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functionality (but not the whole language) of a lang with which they |
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were familiar (or their favourite lang) at build time, shell scripting would |
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become a common language for even more people of the Gentoo |
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family. |
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|
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2)[advantage or effect:] to undertake such a re-write of the way that the |
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shell is built would, conceivably, result in a change in the way that the |
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community thinks of the shell. Perhaps shell extensibility (for which I |
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mean a kind of individual user-level customisation during build) would |
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result in the shell itself being perceived as a kind of IDE or runtime |
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environment, as well as a way to get around and make things happen. |
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This kind of *shell development* might act as a corollary to kernel |
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development. If kernel development is seen as cultivating and |
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extending the functionality and capability of the kernel, then perhaps |
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shell development could be seen as refining and extending the |
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adaptability and usability of the shell at the level of the individual user, |
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providing greater choice and customisability. Would this not be a |
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natural implementation of the kind of hyper-tweak choice-driven |
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philosophy of Gentoo? |
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|
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and of course, any extensibility options to be built in at build-time could |
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of course be ommitted (packaged as *default off*), only turned *on* by |
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those who deliberately wanted to make use of it. |
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|
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It has always felt to me that the power of sh scripting was its flexibility. |
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To extend the functionality of the sh-scripting env in this way would |
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consolidate, in my view, the usefulness of sh-scripting by enhancing it, |
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or at least extending it for those who wanted to make use of it. |
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|
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|
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>SH-scripting is in itself already very powerfull. It's not because lots of |
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>initscripts are bad written (because of historic reasons) that it is to |
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>blame |
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>on sh. You can create functions with sh. You can do so many |
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>powerfull things |
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>with it (no, object oriented programming it cannot, but that's not |
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>powerfull |
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>either :) |
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> |
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>http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/complexfunct.html |
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> |
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>Not that I dislike Python, au contraire, I like the immens easiness for |
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>parsing XML with it, controlling databases with the DB-API... but |
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>initscripts |
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>don't require this possibility. |
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> |
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> Sven Vermeulen |
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-- |
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Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity. |
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- |
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Merv Hammer |
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mailto: merv@×××××××××××××.cy |
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|
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-- |
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gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list |