On Friday 30 March 2007 05:42:51 pm David Brodbeck wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > This thread really does show the unfortunate direction that software > > development has taken even in open source: The simplest package is a rube > > goldberg-like conglomeration of pre-packaged code and requires 50 and 100 > > other packages, each one recursively depended on it's own set of libs and > > scripts and packages!!! > > That's called "not reinventing the wheel." Often it's a good thing.
Yes. In terms of software development, it is a matter of philosophy. You can "reinvent the wheel" each time or use someone else's code. Generally it is better to use what already works. > > One example: The zlib bug. You may remember this one -- a bug in a > decompression routine that created a security hole. A lot of packages > had zlib as a dependency. While they were all affected by the bug, > fixing them was just a matter of replacing one shared library. IIRC, this was pretty widespread. > > Other packages simplified things, in the way you suggest, by simply > including the zlib source code inside their own code. This meant they > didn't have zlib as a dependency. But it also meant that every one of > these packages had to be tracked down and fixed individually. Yes, which is more trouble for fixing, and may - or may not - be a good thing. I'm honestly on the fence on this idea. Seeing how really convoluted and complicated the LFS is, I would tend to argue for putting libraries in one location. But that is a different argument. > > I'd argue that nine times out of ten, using a pre-packaged library is > both simpler and more reliable than rolling your own. It also saves > space. Why should every package carry around all the code needed to, > say, draw a window, when they can link to a single library that does it? > > > Creating a darned index should definitely take less time than solving > > 500,000 equations with 500,000 unknowns about 100 times over, updating > > the silly thing should be almost instantaneous!!! > > Indexing is I/O-heavy, unlike equation-solving. This isn't a matter of > CPU power. Until someone invents a mass storage medium where every > location can be read instantly, indexing is going to be time-consuming, > because you have to wait for data to be read off disk. I'm waiting for the day when I can push my insignia, say, "computer!" and a nice lady's voice comes on asking me what I want. -- kai Free Compean and Ramos http://www.grassfire.org/142/petition.asp http://www.perfectreign.com/?q=node/46 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
