* Matt Zimmerman | On Tue, Jan 23, 2001 at 12:07:02PM +0100, Tollef Fog Heen wrote: | | > So, for instance, the maintainer of postgresql must know perl, tcl, C, | > C++, python and java/jdbc very well? ( since it is written in C, and | > has interfaces for all the programming languages mentioned.) | | Not necessarily. The core of the code is written in C, and the maintainer | should be able to read and write C comfortably in order to effectively maintain | the package. The interfaces for other languages are generally small bits of | glue that don't have very many bugs and don't change very often.
35960 lines of code for the jdbc interface is not what I call 'small bits of glue'. 2000 lines of perl glue (about 650 lines perl, the rest C) isn't necessarily little either - depending on the perl style. However, for python, you are right, about 300 lines of python and 2300 lines of C. (note that all those numbers are from "wc -l"'ing the source files, so it includes blank lines etc. | In the event that a problem arises with the Tcl bits, I imagine I | could post a message here or elsewhere and ask for help. of course. As you could if the problem was not knowing enough C or some other language. | If I needed to do this every time a change was necessary in a C | source file in one of my packages, my progress would be very slow | indeed. I guess that depends a lot on the package. Many packages which use autoconf and automake do only need dh_make and then some minor adjustments. -- Tollef Fog Heen Unix _IS_ user friendly... It's just selective about who its friends are.
