Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Fabian Groffen <grobian@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] The Python problem
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:09:39
Message-Id: 20110627130858.GX42702@gentoo.org
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] The Python problem by Dirkjan Ochtman
1 On 27-06-2011 14:28:34 +0200, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
2 > So I know a bunch of people have already looked at it, and I'd like to
3 > know: what do you find better about the Ruby approach compared to the
4 > Python approach? Is it just the size of python.eclass, or are there a
5 > number of other issues?
6
7 Part of the eclass problem is IMO coding style. Change it to use
8 normally-sized variable names, and to respect 80-columns width, and it
9 already becomes much more consumable.
10
11 The whole comparison of Python vs Ruby vs Java and perhaps the outlook
12 to Perl is kind of hard. What the python eclass accomplishes is very
13 neat. What probably started as a way to be able to have both python 2.x
14 and 3.x installed side by side (because the latter is not really
15 compatible with the former) got IMO out of hand by supporting any python
16 version to coexist with another. I guess many people developing with
17 Python actually love this feature, and in itself, I believe it has use
18 that cannot be ignored any more now. The way in which this feature was
19 implemented -- sometimes it more felt as pushed through the throat -- is
20 more of the rebelious kind than the smooth path for ebuild developers.
21
22 It would be nice when a similar technique could be implemented only
23 once, in a consistent way. In a way, multilib-portage can be considered
24 equal to one of the objectives of the python (and ruby) eclass:
25 multiple times compiling and installing for different ABIs.
26
27 All in all, I don't fancy a rewrite from scratch, since it all works
28 at the moment, and doing so takes another large bit of work. Instead,
29 aligning the work with others to create a similar approach in ebuilds
30 (for ebuild developers) would be favourable to me. And perhaps that
31 should mean that variables which contain versions with some syntax that
32 specify ranges and more should just go, to be replaced by something
33 which is much less powerful in expressiveness, but much easier to
34 understand in the general picture, such as the USE-flags from the ruby
35 eclass.
36
37 Just my €0.02
38
39
40 --
41 Fabian Groffen
42 Gentoo on a different level

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] The Python problem Dirkjan Ochtman <djc@g.o>